Earmarks  of 
Literature 


Arthur  E.  Bostwick 


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EARMARKS  OF  LITERATURE 


Earmarks  of  Literature 

The  Things  That  Make 
Good  Books  Good 


BY 

ARTHUR  E.  BOSTWICK,  Ph.D. 

Librarian,  St.  Louis  Public  Library 


CHICAGO 

A.  C.  McCLURG  &  CO. 

1914 


Copyright 

A.  C.  McClurg  &  Co. 

1914 


Published  January,  1914 


"'t.  K-  HALL'.WIIrt^NB  WK«NV:eH;«i-J 


'3>  ^  s 


FOREWORD 

This  is  an  attempt  to  gather  and  group  to- 

.;,    gether  many  things  that  are  discussed  more 

g   thoroughly   and   at  greater  length   in   other 

places,  but  nowhere,  the  writer  believes,  all 

in  one  place,  or  in  a  style  that  will  commend 

;j^  them  to  the  general  reader. 

The  book  is  based  on  a  series  of  lectures 

^  given  first  to  the  training  class  of  the  Brook- 

■^  lyn  Public  Library,  afterward  to  that  of  the 

New  York  Public  Library,  and  finally  to  that 

of  the  St.  Louis  Public  Library.    The  series 

has  grown  from  year  to  year  by  the  inclu- 

'<;  gsion   of   material    that   seemed   necessary   to 

3  52  supplement   and   round  out  the   knowledge 

commonly  obtained  in  the  schools. 

Arthur  E.  Bostwick. 
St.  Louis  Public  Library. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  The  Nature  of  Literature    ....       i 

II  Style — Its  Grammatical  Form     .     .     lo 

III  Clearness  of  Style 21 

IV  Appropriateness    of    Style    ....    32 
V    Character  in  Style 40 

VI    Special  Literary  Forms 47 

VII  On  the  Reading  of  Poetry  Aloud    .    61 

VIII    Our   Two   Languages 70 

IX  The  Structure  of  Literature    .    .     .    '^d 

X  Literature  as  a  Form  of  Art    ...    87 

XI  The  Appreciation  of  Literature    .     .    93 

XII  The  Preservation  of  Literature    .     .    99 

XIII  The  Ownership  of   Literature    .     .  107 

XIV  The  Makers  of  Literature    .    .    .    .114 
XV  Some  Formalities  of  Written  Speech  120 

XVI  The  Context  in  Literature    ....  128 

XVII  Tpie  Sampling  of  Literature    .     .     .  134 

XVIII    The  Sum  of  the  Matter 139 

Index 143 


I 


Earmarks  of  Literature 

CHAPTER  I 

The  Nature  of  Literature 

S  THERE  anything  about  real  literature 
that  marks  it  for  what  it  is?  May  we 
learn  to  recognize  the  blooded  literary  stock 
from  the  "mavericks"  —  the  waifs  and  strays 
of  literature?  The  untrained  reader  may 
sometimes  err;  that  is  because  he  does  not 
know  where  to  seek  for  the  marks  of  identifi- 
cation. The  earmarks  of  literature  may  not 
be  evident  to  a  careless  passer-by,  but  they 
exist,  and  it  may  be  worth  while  to  try  to 
define  and  describe  some  of  them.  And  at 
the  outset  it  should  be  noted  that  the  word 
"literature"  itself  has  been  used  in  various 
senses.  In  its  broadest  use  the  term  includes 
all  that  has  been  put  into  written  words  since 
the  earliest  dawn  of  time.     Even  the  rude 

1 


2  Earmarks  of  Literature 

scribblings  of  Roman  loungers  on  columns 
and  doorways,  preserved  to  us  by  the  storm  of 
ashes  that  ovenvhelmed  Pompeii,  are  part  of 
it.  and  we  can  not  deny  the  claim  of  the  rudest 
picture-writing  of  th,e  earliest  savage  to  be 
placed  in  the  same  category.  The  multiplica- 
tion table  is  literature  in  this  sense,  and  the 
class  includes  every  book  in  the  largest  library. 
It  is  in  this  sense  that  we  speak  of  the 
"literature"  of  arithmetic  or  of  agriculture, 
meaning  all  that  has  been  written  on  those 
subjects. 

In  its  narrowest  sense  the  class  includes 
only  such  writings  as  have  permanent  value 
due  to  their  form  and  the  treamient  of  their 
subject-matter,  independently  of  their  sub- 
stance itself.  They  may  have  and  should  have 
value  for  the  latter  reason  also,  but  their 
value  should  not  rest  entirely  on  this.  To 
illustrate:  we  are  not  accustomed  to  rank 
works  on  fishing  as  literature;  yet  Izaak 
Walton's  Complete  Angler  stands  in  the  ver\- 
first  rank  among  purely  literar\-  compositions 
simply  on  account  of  the  manner  in  which  it 


The  Nature  of  Literature  3 

is  written.     Manner  can  make  anything  good 
literature,  no  matter  what  it  is  about. 

Bet\veen  these  nvo  classes  —  literature  in 
its  widest  and  literature  in  its  narrowest  sense 
—  the  word  has  been  used  and  can  be  used  to 
mean  almost  any  desired  class  or  combination 
of  written  works.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  there 
is  continued  dispute  about  whether  this  or 
that  work  is  "literature?"  For  instance, 
many  authorities  would  exclude  from  the  class 
all  works  not  marked  by  nobility  of  thought, 
and  all  that  are  on  special  as  opposed  to  gen- 
eral subjects.  This  would  make  substance 
have  a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  definition. 
The  class  as  defined  in  the  Deicey  Decimal 
Classification,  used  in  many  libraries,  is 
mixed.  It  is  determined  partly  by  form, 
because  poetry,  drama,  essays,  etc.,  are  made 
sub-classes,  and  partly  by  the  character  of  the 
subject-matter,  because  humor,  fiction,  etc., 
are  made  other  sub-classes.  In  other  words, 
in  this  classification,  poetry,  no  matter  what  its 
subject  may  be,  is  classed  as  literature  because 
of  its  peculiar  form.     Humor,  no  matter  in 


4  Earmarks  of  Literature 

what  form  it  may  be,  is  classed  there  because 
its  subject  matter  is  "  funny,"  Of  course  this 
is  scarcely  logical,  but  a  strictly  logical  system 
of  library  classification  is  impossible.  When 
a  writer  on  the  subject  speaks  of  "literature" 
he  may  include  very  much  more,  or  very 
much  less,  than  is  contained  in  the  library 
class  of  that  name. 

We  shall  consider  here  literature  in  its 
narrowest  meaning,  which  is  at  the  same  time 
its  highest;  namely,  those  writings  that  have 
permanent  value  due  to  their  form  independ- 
ently of  their  substance. 

We  have  already  seen,  in  our  glance^  at  the 
decimal  classification,  that  certain  formal  ar- 
rangements of  words  or  sentences  entitle  the 
works  in  which  they  are  used  to  be  regarded 
as  literature  from  the  standpoint  of  library 
classification.  This,  of  course,  is  not  the  only 
case  in  which  classification  must  take  pretense 
into  account  instead  of  facts.  When  Dr. 
Cook's  narrative  of  North  Pole  discovery  was 
first  discredited,  there  was  an  amusing  news- 
paper  controversy   over   its    proper   library 


The  Nature  of  Literature  5 

classification.  Reporters  waited  upon  public 
librarians,  in  various  parts  of  the  country,  to 
inquire  whether  the  book  was  to  be  cata- 
logued as  travel  or  fiction.  Evidently  if  the 
classification  is  to  depend  on  the  result  of  an 
investigation  of  the  credibility  of  a  work,  the 
classifier  might  have  to  wait  long  to  complete 
it,  and  in  controverted  instances  different 
librarians  would  classify  differently,  causing 
much  confusion.  Here  the  author's  intention 
must  govern  us.  No  one  would  call  Baron 
Munchausen's  book  history,  because  the 
author  himself  did  not  intend  us  to  believe  it. 
David  Copperfield  is  not  autobiography,  for 
the  same  reason.  But  General  Butler's  Own 
Story  would  be  so  classed,  even  by  one  who 
considered  it  largely  fiction. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  classification 
from  the  standpoint  of  literary  form.  Thus, 
if  a  work  is  written  in  meter,  it  is  poetry  from 
a  library  standpoint  and  must  be  classified  as 
such.  We  do  not  inquire  whether  it  is  good 
or  bad  poetry.  But  in  the  highest  sense  of  the 
word,  as  we  have  just  defined  it,  only  good 


6  Earmarks  of  Literature 

poetry  is  literature,  and,  indeed,  only  good 
poetry  is  poetry  at  all  in  the  best  sense. 
Schoolboy  doggerel  may  be  verse,  and  a  good 
deal  that  is  little  better  finds  its  way  into  our 
libraries.  It  must  then  be  classified  as  "  liter- 
ature" under  "poetry,"  but  it  is  neither 
poetry  nor  literature  in  the  best  sense.  When 
a  work  is  dismissed,  then,  with  the  remark, 
"  It  is  all  very  well,  but  it  is  not  literature," 
the  speaker  means  simply  that  it  will  never 
have  permanent  value  from  its  form  alone. 
This  may  or  may  not  be  a  condemnation,  ac- 
cording as  the  work  does  or  does  qot  aspire 
to  have  such  value.  To  say  that  Robinson's 
High  School  Algebra  or  Roscoe  and  Schor- 
lemmer's  Chemistry  is  "not  literature"  is  in 
no  wise  derogatory,  because  these  aim  to  be 
of  value  only  through  their  subject-matter. 
Such  books  must,  it  is  true,  conform  to  cer- 
tain rules  of  form.  They  must  be  plainly 
and  grammatically  written  and  the  subject- 
matter  must  be  logically  expressed.  But  their 
permanent  value  is  due  not  to  this  form  but 
to  the  information  that  they  contain.     In  a 


The  Nature  of  Literature  7 

book  of  this  kind  the  form  is  generally  only 
the  handmaiden  of  the  subject,  while  in  a 
purely  literary  work  the  subject  is  generally 
but  the  foundation  on  which  the  literary 
qualities  of  the  work  are  built  up.  To  say 
that  Martin's  Physiology  is  not  literature  is 
not  therefore  to  condemn  it,  but  to  say  the 
same  thing  of  a  piece  of  verse  is  to  say  of  it 
the  very  worst  thing  that  could  be  thought  of, 
because  here  the  form  is  everything.  If  it  is 
literature  it  is  so  by  virtue  of  its  poetic  form 
and  style,  and  to  say  that  it  is  not  literature 
is  to  condemn  these  as  hopelessly  bad. 
i  It  may  be  well  to  repeat  here  that  very  few 
works  of  pure  literature  have  not  also  valu- 
able subject-matter,  and  that  very  many  tech- 
nical books  can  claim  to  be  also  works  of  liter- 
ature by  reason  of  their  perfect  form.  That 
is  the  case  with  Walton's  book  on  angling, 
mentioned  at  the  outset  of  this  chapter.  It 
may  be  the  case  even  with  so  dry  a  work 
as  a  mathematical  treatise.  This  is  notably  so 
in  the  French  language,  where  beauty  of  form 
is  prized  more  highly  than  it  is  in  English. 


8  Earmarks  of  Literature 

From  this  point  of  view  the  Romance  lan- 
guages—  that  is,  those  derived  from  the 
Latin,  like  French,  Italian,  and  Spanish  —  are 
more  literary  than  Teutonic  tongues  like 
English  and  German.  Not  that  their  highest 
points  overtop  us,  for  Shakespeare  is  higher 
than  Moliere  and  Goethe  than  Cervantes,  but 
that  on  the  whole  the  general  level  of  writing 
rises  more  nearly  to  a  good  literary  plane. 
From  the  standpoint  of  literary  style  alone,  a 
trashy  French  novel  is  apt  to  be  better  than 
a  far  more  serious  work  in  English,  and  the 
general  run  of  German  fiction  is  still  further 
down  than  our  own. 

It  may  happen,  curiously  enough,  that  a 
work  written  as  a  serious  contribution  to 
knowledge  survives  only  through  its  excellent 
literary  form,  its  facts  being  out  of  date,  or 
that  a  work  intended  as  a  literary  masterpiece 
is  of  value  now  only  because  it  contains  curi- 
ous facts,  like  Erasmus  Darwin's  poem  The 
Botanick  Garden. 

In  order  to  be  good  literature,  therefore,  a 
work  must  possess  good  form.    The  work  of 


The  Nature  of  Literature  9 

literature  is  the  polished  gentleman  among 
other  works.  A  man  may  have  sterling  worth, 
but  he  cannot  hope  to  move  among  cultivated 
people  if  he  eats  with  his  knife  or  sits  with 
his  boots  on  the  table. 

Now  there  are  kinds  of  form  which  all 
literary  works  must  possess,  and  there  are  in 
addition  rules  to  which  each  work  must  con- 
form when  it  is  written  according  to  some 
special  formula,  as  in  poetry,  the  drama,  or 
the  essay.  General  literary  form  is  called 
style,  and  we  shall  take  up  this  before  con- 
sidering the  rules  of  the  various  kinds  of 
special  literary  form.  Style  is  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  the  manner  in  which  an  author 
expresses  himself.  To  pass  muster  it  must 
be:  (i)  Grammatical;  (2)  clear;  (3)  appro- 
priate to  its  subject;  (4)  characteristic  of  the 
writer. 

We  shall  consider  these  qualities  in  turn  in 
the  chapters  that  follow. 


CHAPTER  II 

Style  —  Its  Grammatical  Form 

NO  WORK  is  entitled  to  rank  as  good 
literature  that  is  not  written  grammatic- 
ally. By  this  I  mean  that  it  must  conform  in 
all  respects  with  the  mode  of  writing  gen- 
erally accepted  among  educated  persons  as 
correct.  It  must  be  properly  expressed,  and 
properly  capitalized  and  punctuated. 

What  determines  whether  it  is  so  or  not? 
Here  we  find  that  authorities  dififer,  being 
divided,  in  the  main,  into  two  schools:  those 
who  believe  that  the  rules  as  laid  down  in 
text  books  and  treatises  rest  on  certain  scien- 
tific principles  of  language  and  that  these 
rules  and  principles  may  always  be  applied 
to  test  correctness;  and  those,  on  the  other 
hand,  who  believe  that  the  sole  test  of  correct- 
ness is  good  usage,  and  that  no  matter  how 
contrary  to  fixed  grammatical  rules  an  ex- 
pression may  be,  it  becomes  correct  as  soon 

10 


Style  —  Its  Grammatical  Form       11 

as  it  is  in  general  use  among  cultivated  per- 
sons. According  to  the  first  view,  what  is 
good  English  today  will  be  good  English 
twenty  years  hence;  according  to  the  other 
view,  an  expression  that  is  positively  incorrect 
today  may  be  good  English  in  1920. 

As  is  usual  in  such  cases  the  truth  doubtless 
lies  between  these  extremes.  In  the  first  place, 
the  rules  in  the  books  are  deduced  from  the 
language  itself,  not  the  language  from  the 
rule^  If  I  wish  to  write  a  grammar  of  some 
savage  tongue  that  has  never  been  reduced  to 
writing,  I  cannot  do  it  from  my  own  inner 
consciousness;  I  must  go  and  observe  how  the 
language  is  used  by  those  who  speak  it. 
Doubtless  I  shall  find  that,  in  general,  it  con- 
forms to  rules  and  laws;  all  natural  phe- 
nomena do  that;  but  if  I  write  them  down  I 
must  follow  what  I  find ;  if  my  written  rules 
do  not  agree  with  the  language,  so  much  the 
worse  for  the  rules  —  not  so  much  the  worse 
for  the  language.  The  fact  is  that  man  is  part 
of  nature,  not  apart  from  it,  and  that  his  lan- 
guages   are    a    part   of    natural    phenomena. 


12  Earmarks  of  Literature 

Their  laws  are  therefore  on  a  par  with  other 
natural  laws.  Astronomers  once  deduced 
from  their  observations  the  rule  that  all  the 
planets  moved  in  circles.  Years  afterward 
closer  observation  showed  that  the  curves  were 
not  circles  after  all.  The  astronomers  did  not 
shut  their  eyes  to  the  new  facts  and  hold  to 
the  old  rules;  they  made  new  rules  to  fit  the 
facts.  This  is  what  natural  philosophers  are 
continually  doing  and  grammarians  will  have 
to  do  the  same. 

Again,  students  of  nature  now  recognize 
the  fact  of  growth  and  development  every- 
where. Language  is  not  exempt  from  this. 
If  a  language  is  alive  it  will  grow  and  there- 
fore change.  We  may  not  want  it  to  grow; 
but  it  will,  for  all  that;  just  as  trees  will  grow 
even  when  we  much  prefer  that  they  should 
remain  as  they  are.  Growth,  however,  does 
not  mean  exemption  from  law.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  always  takes  place  along  certain  lines, 
although  we  may  not  always  be  able  to  tell 
beforehand  what  those  lines  may  be.'  The 
usage  of  words  and  their  changes  are  like- 


Style  —  Its  Grammatical  Form        13 

wise  not  erratic,  although  they  may  seem  to 
be  so.  One  of  the  great  sources  from  which 
our  stock  of  words  is  replenished  is  slang. 
Slang  has  been  called  "  language  in  the 
making."  Now  slang  does  not  arise  hap- 
hazard. Slang  words  become  popular  usually 
because  of  their  extreme  aptness;  that  is,  they 
have  some  special  connection  with  the  lan- 
guage in  the  light  of  existing  conditions  that 
makes  them  more  expressive  than  any  legiti- 
mate word.  Often  they  last  but  a  short  time 
and  are  forgotten ;  sometimes  they  continue  in 
use,  are  taken  first  into  colloquial  speech  and 
then  into  more  careful  diction,  and  finally 
become  regular  literary  forms.  The  same  is 
true  of  new  grammatical  forms,  which  start- 
ing in  slang  phrases  may  at  last  end  as  recog- 
nized idioms.  Now  it  is  quite  possible  to  look 
ahead  and  at  least  to  surmise  whether  an 
expression,  not  now  good  English,  may  ever 
become  so.  For  instance,  I  do  not  believe  that 
the  slang  expression  "  to  douse  the  glim," 
meaning  to  put  out  the  light,  will  ever  be 
literary  English.     My  reason  is  that  it  has 


14  Earmarks  of  Literature 

been  recognized  as  slang  for  a  hundred  years 
or  more;  that  it  is  not  in  very  common  use 
and  that  if  there  had  been  need  for  it  in 
literary  English  it  would  have  reached  its  goal 
long  ago.  This  is  not  by  any  means  certain, 
however.  The  word  "kid,"  meaning  a  child, 
was  originally  slang  used  by  thieves  and  ex- 
actly on  a  par  with  "  douse  the  glim."  It  has 
recently  come  into  wide  use  in  colloquial 
speech,  and  it  is  within  the  bounds  of  pos- 
sibility that  it  may  one  day  be  literary 
English.  In  the  compound  "kidnap"  it  is  so 
already. 

To  take  an  expression  that  is  not  slang  but 
simply  incorrect,  I  do  not  believe  that  literary 
English  will  ever  sanction  the  double  nega- 
tive. We  shall  probably  never  be  allowed  to 
say  "he  didn't  go  no  farther."  It  is  usual  to 
teach  children  that  this  is  wrong  because  it  is 
not  logical.  "If  he  didn't  go  no  farther,  he 
must  have  gone  somewhat  farther."  But  the 
double  negative  is  used  in  Greek,  and  the 
negatives  there  are  regarded  as  strengthening 
each  other,  not  as  destroying  each  other.    And 


Style  —  Its  Grammatical  Form       15 

the  double  negative  is  used  in  English  by 
quite  as  many  people  as  do  not  use  it.  The 
trouble  with  it  is  that  it  has  always  been  used 
by  people  of  imperfect  education  and  has 
always  been  regarded  as  a  special  mark  of 
lack  of  education.  Hence  it  is  quite  improb- 
able that  it  will  ever  be  thought  fit  for  good 
company. 

Again,  some  expressions  have  been  for  some 
time  on  the  borders  of  good  literary  society 
but  have  never  succeeded  in  gaining  admit- 
tance. Such  a  form  is  "you  was,"  for  the 
second  person  singular  of  the  past  tense  of  the 
verb  "  to  be."  This  is  still  occasionally  used 
by  educated  persons.  In  Fielding's  Tom 
Jones  all  the  characters  use  it.  Jane  Austen, 
in  her  novels,  frequently  makes  her  characters 
employ  it,  but  never  when  she  represents  them 
as  persons  of  great  cultivation.  Those  who 
still  use  it  call  our  attention  to  the  fact  that 
originally  and  properly  "thou"  and  not 
"you"  is  the  singular  pronoun  of  the  second 
person.  "You"  is  plural,  and  was  used  for 
the  singular  originally  as  a  polite  form.     It 


16  Earmarks  of  Literature 

has  now  taken  the  place  of  "thou"  every- 
where except  in  solemn  and  provincial  dic- 
tion. Now  when  the  pronoun  "you"  is  used 
as  a  singular,  why  should  it  not  take  the  singu- 
lar verb?  This  is  logical  enough,  but  the 
same  logic  would  permit  us  to  say  ''you  is," 
which  never  pretended  to  be  correct.  This 
is  only  one  more  of  the  instances  that  show 
plainly  how  little  logic  has  to  do  with  the 
matter.  "You  were"  is  the  correct  form 
simply  because  it  is  used  by  the  great  ma- 
jority of  educated  persons. 

Good  English,  then,  is  determined  by  good 
usage,  and  good  usage  follows  definite  lines 
both  in  what  it  is  and  in  the  changes  that 
occur  in  it,  although  we  may  not  always  see 
that  any  lines  at  all  are  being  followed.  One 
thing  is  certain :  a  man  will  never  write  good 
English  simply  by  following  rules.  That 
results  in  what  has  been  called  "school 
teacher's  English,"  which  can  be  told  by  an 
expert  as  soon  as  he  hears  it,  and  which  is  apt 
to  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  the  user  has 
been   accustomed   to   speak  very  incorrectly 


Style  —  Its  Grammatical  Form        17 

and  is  trying  to  mend  his  fault  by  observing 
certain  set  rules. 

The  rigid  following  of  rules  would  tend  to 
destroy  all  the  characteristics  of  a  language. 
The  forms  in  which  a  language  seems  to  break 
rules  and  to  cut  out  new  paths  for  itself  are 
called  idioms,  and  no  one  can  write  a  lan- 
guage well  who  does  not  write  it  idiomatic- 
ally. Idioms,  though  they  seem  to  be  depar- 
tures from  rules,  are  usually  only  the  result 
of  growth  in  an  unusual  direction.  Some- 
times their  origin  has  been  forgotten,  and  then 
those  who  would  adhere  too  closely  to  rule 
pounce  upon  them  and  brand  them  as  incor- 
rect. I  have  heard  of  a  school  teacher  who 
insisted  that  "methinks"  was  incorrect  and 
that  it  was  simply  an  illiterate  form  of  "  I 
think."  He  did  not  know,  evidently,  that  the 
last  syllable  of  the  word  is  not  our  present 
word  "think"  but  an  obsolete  similar  form 
meaning  to  seem,  and  that  "me"  is  the  indi- 
rect object.  "Methinks"  is  simply  "it  seems 
to  me."  But  suppose  that  there  was  no  record 
of  this  old  form,  and  that  we  could  not  explain 


18  Earmarks  of  Literature 

"methinks"  any  more  than  we  can  explain 
many  other  idiomatic  forms.  Its  use  in  good 
literature  would  still  sustain  it  and  we  should 
be  sure  that  it  arose  in  some  logical  way. 

This  is  the  attitude  to  take  in  all  disputed 
questions  of  good  or  bad  English.  I  do  not 
mean  to  say  that  it  is  always  possible  to  decide 
at  once.  The  best  authorities  may  differ  and 
do  differ.  It  may  be  necessary  to  take  all 
sorts  of  circumstances  into  account.  Only,  a 
critic  should  never  point  triumphantly  to  a 
rule  without  giving  any  other  reason.  When 
Archbishop  Trench  stoutly  maintained  that 
"It  is  me"  is  perfectly  good  English,  he 
brought  down  on  himself  a  storm  of  protest. 
Most  of  it  was  based  simply  on  the  fact  that 
the  form  violates  the  rule  of  grammar  that 
requires  a  predicate  pronoun  to  agree  with 
the  subject.  Yet  the  French  say  c'est  moi, 
which  is  the  same  thing,  and  there  is  no  dis- 
pute about  it  in  their  language.  The  only 
reason  for  a  dispute  in  English  is  that  usage 
is  divided.  The  best  writers  and  speakers 
nowadays  do  not  say  "  it  is  me,"  and  if  that 


Style  — Its  Grammatical  Form        19 

form  was  ever  idiomatic  English  it  has 
dropped,  or  is  dropping,  from  good  literary 
use.  Doubtless  the  reason  it  has  so  dropped 
is  that  it  appears  to  be  against  rule,  and  rules 
do  thus  have  a  powerful  effect  in  forcing  a 
language  to  conform  to  them  unless  an  idiom 
is  very  strongly  established.  It  is  well  that 
this  is  so,  for  no  one  wants  a  language  con- 
sisting entirely  of  idioms. 

What  I  have  said  applies  also  to  pronuncia- 
tion, although  I  shall  not  touch  on  that  here, 
as  it  is  a  part  of  spoken,  not  of  written  lan- 
guage. It  applies  also  to  capitalization  and 
punctuation.  Of  these  I  will  say  only  that  the 
tendency  of  the  language  is  to  use  as  few 
capitals  and  marks  of  punctuation  as  usage 
will  permit.  We  go  further  in  both  directions 
in  this  country  than  they  do  in  England. 

The  question  of  good  English  is  very  much 
more  difficult  than  the  corresponding  one  in 
many  other  languages.  In  France,  for  in- 
stance, there  is  a  body — the  Academy — 
whose  word  on  literary  matters  is  law.  There 
is  no  question,  therefore,  on  matters  of  good 


20  Earmarks  of  Literature 

French,  when  the  academicians  have  made 
a  decree.  Some  have  lamented  because  there 
is  no  such  body  to  settle  English  usage,  but 
it  is  probably  better  that  there  is  none.  Eng- 
lish thus  remains  a  very  vital  tongue,  sending 
out  feelers  in  all  directions  like  a  vigorous 
vine,  making  some  mistakes  but  keeping  to 
the  same  general  trend.  It  has  always  been 
so  and  its  freedom  has  made  it,  as  we  whose 
mother  tongue  it  is  like  to  think  and  proclaim, 
the  most  flexible  and  best  vehicle  of  expres- 
sion on  the  globe  —  perhaps  the  destined 
world-language  to  which  some  enthusiasts 
look  forward.  The  question  of  good  English 
is  treated  sanely  in  the  appendix  on  Faulty 
Diction  in  the  Standard  Dictionary,  and  cur- 
rently in  the  Bookman  Letter-box  and  in  some 
of  the  daily  papers,  notably  the  New  York 
Sun.  Among  good  books  on  the  subject  are 
White's  Words  and  Their  Uses,  Trench's 
Study  of  Words,  and  the  works  of  Prof. 
Lounsbury  of  Yale.  An  amusing  controversy 
on  the  subject  is  contained  in  Dean  Alvord's 
The  Queen's  English,  followed  by  Moon's 
The  Dean's  English. 


N 


CHAPTER  III 

Clearness  of  Style 

O  STYLE  is  good  that  is  not  clear.  In 
fact,  ^o  book  is  a  work  of  good  litera- 
ture when  the  ordinary  reader  cannot  under- 
stand the  author's  meaning  readily,  whether 
his  difficulty  arises  from  the  subject  or  from 
the  way  in  which  it  is  treated.  If  the  subject 
is  a  complex  or  confusing  one,  which  requires 
close  study,  the  book  is  a  technical  treatise  or  a 
text  book,  and  is  therefore,  as  we  have  seen, 
without  the  borders  of  pure  literature.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  particular  diffi- 
culty with  the  ideas  that  the  writer  wishes  to 
impart,  but  his  meaning  is  obscure  owing  to 
the  way  in  which  he  tries  to  express  them, 
then  his  want  of  clearness  mars  the  literary 
quality  which  his  work  would  otherwise 
possess. 

These  two  kinds  of  obscurity  are  frequently 
confused  by  readers.     Both  prevent  a  work 

21 


22  Earmarks  of  Literature 

from  being  classed  with  literature  in  the 
purest  sense;  but  the  first  kind  —  that  due  to 
deep  thought  —  may  of  course  exist  in  a  work 
of  the  very  highest  plane  —  for  instance,  a 
philosophical  treatise.  The  difficulty  here  is 
that  the  writer  is  trying  to  impart  unfamiliar 
ideas  which  cannot  be  grasped  without  mental 
effort.  But  the  fact  that  you  find  it  hard  to 
grasp  an  author's  ideas  may  be  due  to  his  own 
inability  to  realize  exactly  what  they  are,  or 
at  any  rate,  to  express  them  clearly.  More 
than  one  writer  or  speaker  has  received  credit 
for  profound  thought,  when  he  should  have 
been  censured  for  lack  of  clearness  and  con- 
ciseness. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  this  question 
is,  in  the  main,  entirely  apart  from  that  of 
grammar.  An  ungrammatical  sentence  may 
be  perfectly  clear  and  a  grammatical  one  very 
obscure.  If  a  boy  says,  "  I  hain't  got  no 
money,"  we  are  in  no  doubt  whatever  of  his 
meaning.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  are  in- 
formed that  ''John  asked  James  to  tell  his 
aunt  to  mend  his  coat,"  the  use  of  the  pronouns 


Clearness  of  Style  23 

makes  the  meaning  quite  confused,  although 
the  fault  in  the  sentence  is  rhetorical,  not 
grammatical.  This  illustrates  how  a  sentence 
containing  only  half  a  dozen  words  or  so  may 
be  quite  confused.  On  the  other  hand  a  sen- 
tence two  pages  in  length  may  be  quite  clear, 
although  the  construction  of  such  a  sentence 
requires  care  and  is  a  piece  of  work  that  not 
every  one  can  do.  William  M.  Evarts  was 
noted  for  his  long  sentences,  and  yet  so  nicely 
balanced  were  they  that  no  one  could  fail  to 
understand  them. 

Occasionally  the  necessity  for  clearness  con- 
flicts very  sharply  with  grammatical  rules. 
For  instance,  grammarians  have  always  ob- 
jected to  "splitting  the  infinitive,"  that  is,  to 
the  insertion  of  modifying  words  between 
"  to,"  used  as  the  infinitive  sign,  and  the  verb 
itself.  Thus  they  tell  us  we  must  not  say  "  to 
greatly  err,"  but  "greatly  to  err"  or  "to  err 
greatly."  There  is  no  particular  logical  rea- 
son for  this  rule,  for  the  word  "to,"  here,  was 
originally  only  the  preposition  and  not  a  com- 
ponent part  of  the  verb  —  no  more  so,  at  any 


24  Earmarks  of  Literature 

rate,  than  the  auxiliaries  in  such  forms  as 
"  can  be  "  or  "  may  be."  No  one  objects  to  our 
saying  "it  may  not  be"  or  "it  may  possibly 
be."  There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that  a 
"split"  infinitive  is  regarded  as  inadmissible 
by  most  good  authorities  on  English.  There 
can  be  as  little  doubt,  probably,  that  almost 
all  good  writers  have  used  it,  either  habitu- 
ally or  occasionally.  The  reason  is  that  clear- 
ness often  requires  it.  English  has  lost  almost 
all  its  inflections  and  is  obliged  to  make  the 
relations  of  its  words  clear  by  their  position  in 
the  sentence.  "John  hit  James"  and  "James 
hit  John"  mean  very  different  things;  but  in 
Latin  the  shifting  of  names  would  not  change 
the  meaning.  The  name  of  the  boy  who  did 
the  hitting  would  be  in  the  nominative  case, 
and  that  of  the  one  who  was  hit  would  be 
in  the  accusative,  no  matter  what  position 
they  might  occupy.  The  only  thing  effected 
by  shifting  the  names  about  would  be  a  slight 
alteration  in  the  emphasis.  With  pronouns, 
when  we  still  have  distinct  forms  for  the  cases, 
the  same  is  true  in  English.     "I  saw  him" 


Clearness  of  Style  25 

and  "  Him  saw  I "  mean  precisely  the  same 
thing,  although  the  latter  order  of  words 
would  be  used  only  in  poetry. 

Now  the  clearest  place  in  the  world  for  an 
adverbial  modifier  is  within  the  verb-phrase 
itself,  when  this  phrase  consists  of  more  than 
one  word.  Here  it  cannot  possibly  be  mis- 
understood. And  writers  who  are  accustomed 
to  place  it  so  in  verbal  forms  with  auxiliaries 
are  very  apt  to  claim  the  same  privilege  with 
the  infinitive.  The  more  outrageous  the 
"split"  is,  the  truer  this  is,  and  it  is  truer  in 
spoken  than  in  written  language.  Take  the 
following:  "I  wish  emphatically  and  with 
as  much  deliberation  as  possible  to  say." 
Here  the  speaker  "wishes  to  say."  Does 
the  long  modifier  tell  how  he  wishes  or  how 
he  is  to  say?  The  meaning  is  somewhat 
ambiguous  even  in  the  written  form,  but  the 
reader  will  glance  ahead  and  may  make  up 
his  mind  that  the  modifier  belongs  to  the  in- 
finitive. But  when  the  sentence  is  spoken  the 
hearer  does  not  know  what  is  coming  until 
after  the  word  "possible."     In  his  mind  the 


26  Earmarks  of  Literature 

modifier  may  belong  to  "wish"  or  it  may  go 
with  something  that  is  yet  to  come.  The  doubt 
confuses  him.  The  speaker  is  very  apt,  there- 
fore, to  put  his  infinitive  sign  before  the 
modifier  and  say  "I  wish  to  —  emphatically 
and  with  as  much  deliberation  as  possible  — 
say  that,"  etc.,  etc.  When  chided  for  so  ab- 
surd a  "split,"  he  would  be  very  likely  to 
plead :  "  Oh  yes ;  I  know  it  is  incorrect,  but 
I  could  make  my  meaning  plainer  that  way." 

In  a  colloquial  or  impromptu  address,  or 
in  a  similar  form  of  writing,  as  in  a  news- 
paper article,  this  reason  holds  good,  whereas 
in  a  more  formal  composition,  where  the 
writer  has  time  to  rearrange  his  sentences  and 
secure  clearness,  if  possible,  by  some  other 
method,  it  ought  not  to  be  accepted.  Much 
more  might  be  said  on  this  conflict  of  clearness 
and  good  usage,  and  such  things  are  doubtless 
playing  their  part  in  the  slow  alteration  of 
the  language. 

Obscurity,  however,  may  exist  or  be  avoided 
in  ways  that  have  nothing  to  do  with  either 
grammatical  or  rhetorical  rules.     A  writer. 


Clearness  of  Style  27 

for  instance,  may  use  obsolete  or  provincial 
forms  of  expression,  or  foreign  words,  in 
doing  either  of  which  he  lays  himself  open 
to  the  charge  of  using  bad  English  as  well 
as  obscure  diction.  A  foreign  word,  of  course, 
may  or  may  not  be  clear,  according  to  the 
degree  of  knowledge  of  the  person  to  whom 
it  is  addressed.  It  used  to  be  presumed  that 
every  well-educated  person  knew  Latin,  and 
it  was  therefore  admissible  to  use  Latin  words 
and  quotations  quite  freely  in  any  work  ad- 
dressed to  people  of  education.  But  in  our 
time  education  does  not  follow  fixed  lines,  and 
it  is  quite  possible  that  one  may  be  well- 
educated  without  a  knowledge  of  the  classical 
tongues.  Much  Latin,  or  even  any  Latin  at 
all,  therefore,  may  sin  against  clearness.  The 
same  may  be  said  of  French,  German,  and 
other  languages.  In  an  essay  intended  to  be 
used  by  those  who  are  presumably  familiar 
with  those  languages,  words  and  expressions 
may  be  freely  used  that  in  another  class  of 
writing  would  be  hopelessly  obscure.  The 
same  is  true  of  all  sorts  of  allusions,  technical 


28  Earmarks  of  Literature 

or  otherwise.  Clerk  Maxwell,  the  great 
English  physicist,  wrote  numerous  poems 
embodying  In  every  line  reference  to  the 
quantities  and  processes  of  higher  mathe- 
matics. To  a  mathematician  these  were 
thoroughly  clear,  and  indeed  approached 
closely  to  literature,  while  to  the  ordinary 
reader  they  conveyed  no  more  meaning  than 
if  they  had  been  written  in  the  Choctaw 
language.  The  classical  allusions  with 
which  Milton's  works  are  often  loaded,  were 
doubtless  familiar  to  those  to  whom  they  were 
especially  addressed,  but  nowadays  even  the 
student  needs  a  note  now  and  then  to  help 
him.  If  a  twentieth  century  poet  should 
follow  Milton's  example  in  this  regard,  he 
would  be  pronounced  pedantic. 

The  writing,  in  other  words,  should  be 
adapted  to  its  public.  And  if  it  is  so  adapted 
we  do  not  quarrel  with  it  because  it  is  not 
adapted  to  some  other  public.  We  do  not 
insist  that  Milton  Is  obscure  because  the  c*-di- 
nary  reader  has  to  look  up  some  of  his  allu- 
sions,  any  more   than  we   should  hold   that 


Clearness  of  Style  29 

Moliere  is  unintelligible  because  we  do  not 
happen  to  understand  French. 

Comparatively  few  persons  can  read  Henry 
James  with  pleasure.  This  is  partly  because 
of  late  years  he  has  cultivated  certain  pecu- 
liarities of  style  that  are  vexing,  and  in  so 
far  he  is  to  be  condemned.  But  it  is  also 
largely  because  he  makes  his  points  indirectly 
and  imparts  his  ideas  by  saying  what  appears 
to  refer  to  something  different.  He  thus 
appeals  directly  to  those  persons  who  have 
cultivated  quickness  of  mind  —  mental  alert- 
ness—  in  his  particular  line,  and  therefore  he 
is  not  to  be  condemned  because  his  meaning 
is  not  at  once  apparent  to  everyone.  It  is 
even  conceivable  that  a  man  might  invent  a 
form  of  expression  which  should  be  intelli- 
gible to  himself  alone,  and  write  in  it  a 
beautiful  work  of  pure  literature  which 
should  yet  be  uncomprehended  by  the  rest 
of  mankind. 

Yet,  other  things  being  equal,  a  work  of 
literature  is  more  catholic  as  it  appeals  to  a 
greater  number  of  people;    hence  a  writer 


30  Earmarks  of  Literature 

who  limits  his  audience  in  any  way,  so  far 
falls  in  the  literary  scale.  Of  course  every 
writer  must  be  limited  to  those  who  speak  the 
tongue,  unless  his  work  is  translated,  yet  I 
cannot  help  thinking  that  those  who  can  be 
successfully  translated  and  so  appeal  to  a 
wider  circle  must  have  more  of  that  quality 
of  universal  sympathy  which  characterizes  the 
greatest  literature.  It  is  this  which  is  the 
very  acme  of  clearness  —  which  enables  the 
writer  to  reach  his  reader's  heart  almost  before 
his  sentence  comes  to  an  end. 

But  there  is  such  a  thing  as  being  too  clear, 
or  rather,  I  should  say,  as  trying  too  hard 
to  be  clear.  Take  the  simple  case  where  one's 
pronouns  are  mixed.  Some  wTiters  are  so 
afraid  that  they  will  be  laughed  at  for  con- 
fusing their  pronouns  that  they  seem  to  have 
eschewed  these  parts  of  speech  altogether,  and 
say  "John  asked  James  to  tell  John's  aunt 
to  mend  John's  coat,"  or,  still  worse,  they 
explain  themselves  in  parentheses,  as,  "John 
asked  James  to  tell  his  (John's)  aunt  to  mend 
his  (John's)   coat."    This  procedure  may  be 


Clearness  of  Style  31 

necessary  in  certain  cases,  but  it  is  hardly  a 
characteristic  of  literary  style.  Similarly, 
when  a  writer  appears  to  be  trying  very  hard 
to  avoid  obscurity  in  any  way,  as  when  he 
introduces  long  footnotes  to  explain  his  allu- 
sions, or  translates  his  Latin  or  German  quota- 
tions in  parentheses,  he  at  once  suggests  the 
very  thing  that  he  tries  to  avoid.  No  one  can 
attain  lucidity  in  this  way. 

The  clearest  style  is  generally  the  simplest. 
The  writer  whose  meaning  is  so  plain  that  it 
never  gives  us  a  thought,  and  whose  diction 
is  so  simple  and  ordinary  that  it  seems  easy, 
until  we  try  to  imitate  it,  is,  so  far  as  this 
quality  of  style  is  concerned,  the  one  who 
makes  the  most  successful  contribution  to 
literature. 


A 


CHAPTER  IV 

Appropriateness  of  Style 

LL  tools  must  be  adapted  to  the  work 
that  they  are  to  perform.  A  screw- 
driver is  an  excellent  device  for  its  purpose, 
but  one  cannot  cut  meat  with  it.  And  lan- 
guage, after  all,  is  a  tool  to  convey  our  ideas 
—  to  get  them  into  other  people's  heads.  Its 
shape  and  character,  therefore,  must  depend 
on  the  kind  of  ideas  that  it  is  necessary  to 
convey  and  the  kind  of  people  to  whom  we 
desire  to  convey  them./  We  saw  in  the  last 
lecture  that  a  series  of  words  might  be  clear 
to  one  person  and  not  to  another.  But  it  is 
more  than  a  question  of  clearness.  All  knives 
will  cut,  but  we  choose  a  carving  knife  for 
one  kind  of  cutting  and  a  penknife  for  another. 
So  a  sermon  and  a  comic  anecdote  may  both 
be  perfectly  clear  to  the  reader,  but  if  either 
were  told  in  the  style  of  the  other  we  should 
recognize  the  inappropriateness  of  it  at  once. 

32 


Appropriateness  of  Style  33 

It  must  be  said  that  a  good  deal  of  the 
appropriateness  or  inappropriateness  of  lan- 
guage to  its  subject  rests  on  considerations 
that  have  nothing  to  do  with  language  itself. 
It  is  largely  a  matter  of  association  and 
fashion,  and  it  is  here,  therefore,  that  for- 
eigners stumble  very  frequently.  You  look 
in  your  French  dictionary  and  find  several 
w^ords  corresponding  to  an  English  word;  but 
the  dictionary  does  not  and  cannot  tell  you 
the  fine  shades  of  usage.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  Frenchman,  knowing  that  an  animal  may 
be  called  either  a  "beast"  or  a  "creature," 
and  knowing  that  the  latter  word  is  applicable 
also  to  a  human  being,  assumes  that  the  former 
also  may  be  so  used,  and  calls  a  woman  "  that 
dear  beast,"  much  to  our  amusement.  If  we 
analyze  the  matter,  it  is  purely  an  affair  of 
custom  that  one  word  is  not  used  in  both 
senses,  just  as  the  other  is.  Why  do  we  call 
the  sun  "  he  "  and  the  moon  "  she  "  ?  In  some 
other  languages  the  reverse  is  the  case,  and 
there  are  thousands  of  such  instances.  For 
solemn  discourse  we  have  in  English  almost 


34  Earmarks  of  Literature 

a  separate  dialect.  Some  recent  English 
writers  on  literary  criticism  lay  special  stress 
on  this  as  one  of  the  strong  points  of  the 
language.  No  one  could  possibly  think  that 
a  prayer  in  English  was  addressed  to  anyone 
but  the  Deity,  even  though  the  name  of  God 
does  not  appear  in  it.  In  French  the  same 
diction  is  used  that  is  employed  in  speaking 
to  an  intimate  friend,  a  child,  or  a  servant. 
The  finer  shades  of  appropriateness  of  style 
are  often  unnoticed  and  neglected,  especially 
in  letter-writing.  People  write  letters  of  con- 
dolence in  the  same  style  that  they  would  use 
to  tell  of  a  trip  to  New  York;  they  address 
aged  persons  who  are  barely  known  to  them 
in  the  same  style  that  they  would  use  to  a 
friend  of  equal  age;  they  are  flippant  when 
they  ought  to  be  serious;  or  ponderous  when 
they  ought  to  be  graceful.  The  art  of  letter 
writing  is  very  largely  the  art  of  adapting 
one's  manner  to  the  particular  person  ad- 
dressed and  to  the  particular  occasion  and 
object  of  the  letter.  It  is  the  same  with 
books,  many  of  which  fall  below  the  best 


Appropriateness  of  Style  35 

standards  of  literature  in  just  this  way.  They 
are  grammatical,  well-expressed,  clear,  but 
not  adapted  to  their  readers,  their  occasions 
or  their  objects.  As  examples  of  books  badly 
adapted  to  readers,  take  many  children's 
books,  especially  those  written  in  former 
times  for  religious  instruction.  The  lan- 
guage, the  forms  of  thought,  the  method  of 
the  writer,  are  all  such  as  to  repel  the  child 
instead  of  to  attract  him.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  are  books  that  are  "too  easy"  —  written 
down  to  the  child's  supposed  intellect  in  a 
way  to  excite  his  contempt.  A  candidate  for 
governor  of  a  state  once  lost  many  votes  by 
addressing  an  audience  of  working-men  in  his 
shirt  sleeves.  He  thought  they  would  be 
pleased  at  this  show  of  democracy,  but  they 
were  offended  because  he  did  not  show  the 
same  respect  to  them  that  he  would  have 
shown  to  a  more  fashionable  or  scholarly 
audience.  This  is  the  way  that  many  books 
fail:  the  writer  misjudges  his  readers  and 
does  not  properly  adapt  his  treatment  of  the 
subject  to  them.     He  is  too  learned,  or  too 


36  Earmarks  of  Literature 

condescending,  or  uses  words  that  are  too  big 
or  too  simple.  I  once  heard  a  library  trustee 
make  an  address  at  the  opening  of  a  new 
branch,  on  the  supposition  that  those  to  whom 
he  spoke  were  residents  of  the  neighborhood, 
whereas  they  were  library  assistants  who  had 
come  from  all  parts  of  the  city.  I  once  pre- 
pared an  address  explaining  many  features  of 
library  work  to  the  general  public,  and  had 
to  deliver  it,  much  to  my  chagrin,  to  an  audi- 
ence of  library  workers  who  knew  quite  as 
much  about  the  subject  as  I  did.  In  all  these 
cases  there  was  lack  of  adaptation  to  the 
reader  or  the  listener. 

As  examples  of  literary  efforts  badly 
adapted  to  the  occasion,  take  any  effort  that 
is  purely  "occasional"  —  a  poem,  an  oration, 
an  after-dinner  speech.  Half  of  them  are  cal- 
culated to  throw  the  hearer  into  gloom  when 
the  day  should  be  joyful,  or  to  make  him 
laugh  hysterically  at  a  funeral.  This  kind  of 
literature  is  most  freely  undertaken  by  ama- 
teurs, and  yet  it  is  one  of  the  hardest  in  which 
to  succeed:  hence  the  very  few  examples  of 


Appropriateness  of  Style  37 

it  that  have  been  preserved  as  pure  literature. 
There  are  a  few:  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  speech 
stands  at  the  very  head.  Cicero  delivered 
legal  addresses  in  court  that  have  been  pre- 
served as  models  of  literature.  Bossuet's 
funeral  orations  are  part  of  the  treasures  of 
French  literature.  But  as  for  the  average 
effort  of  this  kind,  it  will,  I  fear,  never  find 
its  way  into  our  list  of  what  is  greatest  and 
best. 

For  examples  of  writing  whose  form  is  not 
in  accord  with  its  object  we  have  to  go  no 
further  than  our  familiar  songs,  from  hymns 
down  to  the  latest  coon  song.  These  consist 
of  poetry  that  is  intended  to  be  set  to  music; 
that  is  its  object.  But  in  nine  cases  out  of 
ten  it  is  not  well-fitted  for  a  musical  setting. 
Music  has  both  accent  and  quantity;  that  is, 
there  are  accented  notes,  and  also  long  and 
short  notes.  Now  English  poetry  depends 
primarily  on  accent,  not  on  quantity,  as  Latin 
poetry  did;  but  quantity  is  still  an  important 
feature,  and  especially  so  in  verse  that  is  to 
be  set  to  music.    Some  of  the  bad  settings,  to 


38  Earmarks  of  Literature 

be  sure,  are  the  fault  of  the  musician,  not 
of  the  poet.  Sometimes  the  words  were  not 
intended  by  the  poet  to  be  set  to  music  at 
all,  in  which  case  he  can  scarcely  be  held 
responsible.  But  if  a  writer  deliberately 
writes,  for  a  musical  setting,  words  that  it  is 
difficult  or  impossible  to  set  to  music  at  all 
he  is  surely  guilty  of  the  literary  sin  of  not 
adapting  his  style  to  his  object.  Equally 
guilty  is  he  who  writes,  we  will  say,  an  adver- 
tisement in  a  way  that  makes  his  readers 
resolve  that  they  will  under  no  circumstances 
buy  the  articles  that  he  advertises.  I  do  not 
see  why  an  advertisement  should  not  be  a  work 
of  pure  literature,  although  I  do  not  recollect 
ever  seeing  such  a  one.  The  "  Spotless  Town  " 
Sapolio  verses  come  pretty  near  it. 

Of  course  we  do  not  quarrel  with  inappro- 
priateness  that  exists  simply  from  lapse  of 
time  or  change  of  place.  Cicero's  orations 
addressed  to  the  Conscript  Fathers  do  not 
cease  to  be  good  literature  because  the  Con- 
script Fathers  long  ago  ceased  to  exist. 
Neither  do  we  deny  the  claims  of  many  books 


Appropriateness  of  Style  39 

from  foreign  countries  that  conform  to  the 
standard  of  propriety  where  they  were  writ- 
ten, though  that  standard  is  not  our  own.  A 
writer  adapts  his  work  to  a  single  time  and 
place;  if  it  is  good  literature,  it  remains  good 
though  time  and  place  change.  Yet  greatest 
of  all  is  the  literature  that  is  appropriate  to 
all  times  and  all  places  —  deals  with  the  great 
facts  and  emotions  of  human  life  in  such  a 
way  that  it  is  universally  true.  This  is  the 
great  literature  of  inspiration. 


N 


CHAPTER  V 

Character  in  Style 

O  MAN  or  woman  is  precisely  like  any 
other  man  or  woman  that  ever  was,  is, 
or  will  be.  This  is  what  we  mean  when  we 
speak  of  individuality;  and  when  that  indi- 
viduality shows  itself  in  a  person's  writings, 
those  writings  are  said  to  be  characteristic. 

It  is  to  this  feature  that  the  French  writer 
referred  when  he  said  "  style  is  the  man." 
He  uses  the  word  "style"  to  mean  character 
alone,  and  it  is  often  so  used;  in  fact,  we  may 
consider  all  the  other  desirable  features  as 
part  of  it  —  clearness,  correctness,  appropri--^^ 
ateness.  If  the  man  has  a  clear  mind,  his 
writing,  if  characteristic,  will  also  be  clear; 
if  he  has  a  strong  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things, 
his  writing  will  be  appropriate.  If  his  mind 
is  muddy  and  his  taste  bad,  then  his  writings, 
if  characteristic,  will  condemn  him  instead  of 
winning  him  approval. 

40 


X 


Character  in  Style  41 

But  there  is  more  than  this  in  character. 
The  best  of  it  consists  of  combinations  of  deli- 
cate qualities  that  cannot  be  defined,  but  are 
easily  recognized.  How  common  it  is  for  the/' 
reader  of  a  letter  to  exclaim,  "  Now,  doesn't 
that  sound  exactly  like  John?"  Some  sen- 
tence, some  peculiar  phraseology,  some  turn 
of  thought,  stamps  the  letter  as  the  special 
product  of  one  mind,  with  which  we  are 
familiar,  and  whose  reflection  we  recognize 
in  the  written  words.  It  is  precisely  the  same 
with  books.  No  one  familiar  with  Dickens, 
with  Thackeray,  with  Kipling,  could  read 
half  a  dozen  pages  of  one  of  these  writers 
without  knowing  which  one  was  the  author. 
If  there  is  here  and  there  a  colorless  passage 
without  the  stamp  of  the  writer's  individuality 
on  it,  we  say  simply,  "That  is  not  character- 
istic ;  anyone  might  have  written  it."  A  book 
made  up  wholly  of  such  passages  cannot  be  a 
great  book.  If  the  writer  is  great;  if  he  is  a 
genius,  a  characteristic  style  may  so  far  over- 
shadow all  the  other  qualities  that  we  have 
been  considering  that  he  may  qualify  as  a 


42  Earmarks  of  Literature 

creator  of  literature,  even  though  he  is  some- 
times ungrammatical,  sometimes  obscure, 
sometimes  lacking  in  taste.  Shakespeare 
occasionally  sins  in  every  one  of  these  ways: 
yet  he  is  the  greatest  figure  in  our  literature. 
This  is  not  to  contradict  what  I  have  been 
saying  about  correctness,  clearness,  and  taste; 
for  great  genius  overrides  rules.  If  you  are 
a  second  Shakespeare  we  will  forgive  you  an 
occasional  lapse  of  this  kind,  but  hardly  other- 
wise. Posterity  will  sit  in  judgment  on  every 
writer  who  has  claims  to  be  called  great,  and 
Posterity  is  a  hard  judge.  It  may  turn  out, 
for  instance,  that  Henry  James  and  George 
Meredith  may  be  denied  admission  to  the 
inner  circle  on  account  of  their  lack  of  clear- 
ness, despite  the  fact  that  they  have  very 
characteristic  and  interesting  styles.  The  ad- 
mirers of  both  these  writers  would  say  that 
their  strong  characters  outweigh  their  faults, 
just  as  Shakespeare's  does;  but  what  the  final 
verdict  will  be  we  do  not  know. 

What  is  the  mechanical  method  by  which 
a  man  puts  himself  —  translates  himself,  we 


Character  in  Style  43 

may  say — into  words?  If  we  could  describe 
it,  and  formulate  effective  rules  for  carrying 
it  out,  then  any  one  of  us  could  write  like 
Shakespeare  or  Kipling  or  Poe.  A  good 
imitator,  to  be  sure,  can  do  very  wonderful 
things  in  this  direction;  but  he  can  hardly 
tell  how,  any  more  than  a  mimic  can  describe 
to  you  just  how  he  is  able  to  imitate  the  per- 
sonal peculiarities  of  an  actor.  After  all,  he 
can  simply  reproduce  a  few  superficial  tricks; 
he  cannot  give  us  the  soul  of  the  man,  because 
it  is  not  in  his  body.  You  see  a  man  imitate 
Henry  Irving  or  a  woman  imitate  Nazimova 
and  you  say  it  is  done  to  the  life;  yet  the 
imitators  could  not  play  Shylock  like  the  one, 
or  Nora,  in  "The  Doll's  House,"  like  the 
other;  if  they  could  they  would  be  earning 
five  hundred  dollars  a  performance  instead  of 
five.  So  we  often  read  successful  short  paro- 
dies of  Carlyle,  of  Kipling,  or  of  Poe;  but 
the  writers  could  not  produce  books  like  either 
of  these.  The  style  is  the  man;  if  the  man 
is  not  there,  the  style  in  its  fullness,  its  depth, 
its  entirety,  cannot  be  there  either.    The  char- 


44  Earmarks  of  Literature 

acteristic  of  all  great  art  is  that  it  records  the 
soul  of  the  artist;  the  picture  at  which  you 
look  may  be  that  of  a  house  or  a  horse  or  a 
hill:  if  the  artist  is  great  he  will  tell  you 
just  how  he  was  feeling  when  he  studied  that 
house  or  that  hill :  you  will  feel  sad,  or  gay,  or 
quiet,  or  inspired  by  it,  just  as  he  was.  So 
with  literary  art;  the  writer  may  be  describ- 
ing a  riot  or  a  herd  of  cows ;  he  may  be  writing 
a  lyric  or  a  set  of  resolutions:  if  he  is  an 
artist  he  will  reproduce  in  his  readers  his  own 
soul,  as  it  was  when  he  wrote.  This  is  why 
the  great  artists  are  great,  be  they  artists  in 
tone  —  great  musicians,  artists  in  form  — 
great  painters  and  sculptors,  or  artists  in  words 
—  great  writers. 

Here  we  may  return  for  a  moment  to  the 
subject-matter  of  the  works  whose  claims  to 
be  considered  as  great  literature  we  are  con- 
sidering. From  our  present  standpoint  it  is 
important  only  as  furnishing  the  author  an 
opportunity  to  reveal  himself.  Obviously  an 
enthusiastic  political  reformer  would  not 
choose  as  such  a  vehicle  a  treatise  on  painting 


Character  in  Style  45 

or  a  passionate  lover  of  nature  a  book  on  the 
history  of  the  Middle  Ages.  But  when  a 
skilled  writer  writes  on  what  he  loves  he  can 
make  it  great  literature,  whether  he  tries  to 
do  so  or  not.  Ruskin  was  an  art  critic;  he 
wrote  to  convert  his  readers  to  his  views,  but 
in  so  doing  he  made  great  literature.  Gibbon 
wrote  a  history  of  the  decline  and  fall  of  the 
Roman  Empire;  in  doing  this  he  produced 
great  literature.  If  each  had  written  on  the 
other's  subject  the  result  might  have  been 
good,  but  not  great. 

From  this  point  of  view  the  choice  of  a 
subject  is  important.  And  it  is  equally  so 
from  the  reader's  standpoint.  He  will  nat- 
urally appreciate  most  thoroughly  great 
literature  whose  subject  is  likely  to  rouse 
enthusiasm  in  him.  This  is  why  the  literature 
that  is  most  universally  appreciated  is  on  sub- 
jects that  have  a  universal  appeal  —  that  voice 
the  great  emotions  of  humanity  —  love,  grief, 
pity,  and  so  on.  It  is  none  the  less  true,  how- 
ever, that,  except  indirectly,  the  subject  is  not 
an  element  of  the  literature's  greatness  any 


46  Earmarks  of  Literature 

more  than  the  material  of  which  a  statue  is 
made  contributes  to  its  artistic  excellence. 
Certain  materials  are  fit,  while  others  are 
unfit;  bronze  and  marble  are  better  than 
tallow,  and  molasses  could  not  be  used  at  all, 
but  it  is  what  the  sculptor  does  with  his  bronze 
or  marble  —  what  he  reveals  with  it,  what  he 
teaches  through  it  —  that  matters.  So  it  is 
what  the  historian  does  with  his  story,  what 
the  art  essayist  does  with  his  criticism,  that 
makes  it  literature  —  that  sets  him  on  high 
with  Ruskin  and  Gibbon  or  ranks  him  with 
the  most  trivial  writer  of  the  daily  press. 


CHAPTER  VI 
Special  Literary  Forms 

OPECIAL  kinds  of  literary  form  are  not 
^^  arbitrary;  they  are  born  of  some  necessity 
and  are  efforts  to  follow  some  line  of  least 
resistance.  There  are  hundreds  of  them  that 
we  do  not  recognize  and  that  are  trivial  in 
origin  or  results.  Take,  for  instance,  the  tele- 
graphic form,  born  of  the  necessity  of  putting 
an  intelligible  message  into  the  fewest  pos- 
sible words.  It  is  marked  especially  by  its 
omissions. 

Thus,  when  a  man  wishes  to  telegraph, 
''Your  proposition  is  satisfactory  to  me  as  you 
have  finally  modified  it,  and  you  may  expect 
me  on  the  train  that  arrives  about  noon. 
Please  notify  our  friends  in  New  York  that 
I  am  coming,"  he  may  put  it  into  ten  words 
as  follows :  '^  Proposition  satisfactory  as  modi- 
fied. Coming  noon  train.  Notify  New 
York."     This  is  as  much  a  special  literary 

47 


48  Earmarks  of  Literature 

form  as  poetry  or  the  drama.  Another  form 
that  is  born  of  necessity  for  brevity  is  the 
newspaper  headline.  Here  the  writer  is  con- 
fined to  a  certain  number  of  letters  instead  of 
a  certain  number  of  words,  as  in  the  telegram. 
The  writing  of  inscriptions,  long  recognized 
as  an  important  and  serious  form  of  literature, 
is  limited  in  much  the  same  way.  We  shall 
consider  here  only  one  or  two  of  these  special 
literary  forms,  and  those  the  most  widely 
recognized  and  most  important. 

Poetry 

Most  persons,  if  asked  what  is  most  neces- 
sary to  poetry,  would  say  that  it  must  have 
meter  and  rhyme;  yet  there  has  been  poetry 
without  either.  In  particular,  much  ancient 
Teutonic  poetry  depended  on  alliteration  — 
the  beginning  of  certain  conspicuous  words 
with  the  same  sound  —  a  property  akin  to 
rhyme,  where  the  similar  sounds  are  at  the 
end,  but  not  at  all  like  it  in  effect.  What  is 
called  meter,  also,  has  varied  greatly  in  its 
elements;  Latin  meter,  for  instance,  depends 


Special  Literary  Forms  49 

chiefly  on  quantity,  or  the  length  of  syllables, 
while  English  meter  depends  chiefly  on  accent 
or  the  stress  given  to  certain  syllables  in  pro- 
nunciation. It  is  quite  possible  that  other 
ways  of  writing  poetry  may  be  found  in  the 
future,  so  that  we  may  only  say  that  it  is  a 
form  of  literary  expression  in  which  the  words 
are  given  some  kind  of  symmetry  marked  by 
regular  recurrence  of  quantity,  accent,  similar 
sounds,  or  the  like. 

We  shall  consider  here  chiefly  English 
poetry,  whose  characteristic  is  the  regular 
recurrence  of  accent.  The  recurrence  of 
accent  is  a  strong  characteristic  of  all  English 
speech,  marking  it  off  distinctly  from  such  a 
language  as  the  French,  which  has  practically 
none.  Unfortunately,  the  word  "accent"  is 
commonly  used  in  two  senses  —  "stress"  and 
"  intonation."  When  we  speak  of  a  "  French 
accent"  we  mean  a  French  intonation.  The 
marks  called  "  accents,"  used  over  certain 
French  vowels,  simply  indicate  special  pro- 
nunciations. The  absence  of  stress  is  a  pecu- 
liarity of  French  intonation.    One  may  imitate 


50  Earmarks  of  Literature 

a  Frenchman  very  well  by  simply  pronounc- 
ing an  English  sentence  with  great  care  that 
precisely  the  same  stress  is  bestowed  on  each 
syllable  and  word.  In  pronouncing  a  word 
of  two  or  more  syllables,  the  English-speaking 
person  always  puts  in  one  primary  or  strong 
accent  and  as  many  secondary  or  weak  ones 
as  may  be  necessary,  and  in  indicating  the 
pronunciation  of  a  word  the  location  of  these 
accents  is  very  important.  It  is  difficult  to 
explain  to  a  Frenchman  what  this  means,  just 
as  it  is  difficult  for  a  Chinaman  to  explain 
to  us  that  in  his  language  musical  pitch  is  an 
important  element  of  pronunciation. 

Now,  just  as  we  accent  the  syllables  of  our 
words,  so  we  accent  the  words  in  our  sen- 
tences.* We  instinctively  try  to  make  these 
accented  words  in  prose  fall  at  as  regular 
intervals  of  time  as  possible,  by  slowing  up 
where  there  are  few  or  no  words  between 
accents  and  by  hurrying  where  there  are  many. 
Thus,  we  say  naturally: 
S'ay !  are  you  |  go'ing  down  [  to'wn  this  [  ev'ening? 

*A    very    interesting    book    on    this    subject,    Saintsbury's 
Rhythm  of  English  Prose,  has  just  been  published. 


Special  Literary  Forms  51 

Now,  the  chief  difference  between  English 
poetry  and  English  prose  is  that  in  the  former 
the  number  of  syllables  between  accents  is 
made  uniform,  so  that  if  spoken  uniformly, 
without  dragging  or  hurrying  in  any  part,  the 
accents  will  fall  at  regular  time  intervals. 
There  are  many  modifications  of  this  —  poetry 
with  elements  of  prose,  and  prose  with  some 
of  the  features  of  poetry  —  but  this  is  the 
broad  principle.  Hitherto,  we  have  said 
nothing  about  quantity.  Unfortunately,  again, 
this  word  is  used  in  two  senses.  Writers  on 
English  verse  have  used  it  to  mean  the  dif- 
ference between  accent  and  the  lack  of  accent, 
calling  an  accented  syllable  long  and  an 
unaccented  one  short.  It  really  depends  on 
the  time  it  takes  to  pronounce  a  syllable. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  three  monosyllables 
"fat,"  "fair,"  and  "fenced."  The  first  is 
uttered  in  a  very  short  time,  while  it  takes 
longer  to  say  either  of  the  other  two,  one 
because  of  the  character  of  the  vowel  sounds 
and  the  other  because  of  the  combination  of 
final    consonants.      Latin    and    Greek   meter 


52  Earmarks  of  Literature 

depended  entirely  on  quantity  —  the  proper 
succession  of  long  and  short  syllables.  In 
English,  while  the  meter  does  not  depend  on 
quantity,  it  may  be  improved  or  spoiled  by 
giving  attention  to  quantity.  Verses  in  w^hich 
the  accented  syllables  are  long  and  the  unac- 
cented ones  short  are  recognized  by  most 
persons  as  "smooth"  and  "flowing."  Where 
a  long  syllable,  especially  one  where  there 
is  a  combination  of  consonants,  is  unaccented, 
the  verse  is  harsh.  Of  course,  a  poet  may 
make  verse  harsh  on  purpose  to  produce  an 
effect. 

Another  element  of  poetry  is  alliteration, 
spoken  of  above  as  the  distinctive  feature  of 
old  Teutonic  poetry.  It  is  used  by  Wagner  in 
his  music-dramas  and  is  found  in  all  very 
early  English  (Anglo-Saxon)  poetry.  It  is 
used  in  modern  English  poetry  only  to 
heighten  an  effect,  and  may  be  very  effectively 
employed. 

When  we  think  of  a  line  that  we  have  just 
read,  "  How  fine  that  is!  how  well  expressed! " 
we  shall  often  find  by  examination  that  quan- 


Special  Literary  Forms  53 

tity    and     alliteration,     skilfully    used,     are 
responsible  for  the  effect. 


D 


rama 


So  far  as  drama  is  a  special  literary  form, 
that  form  is  born  of  the  necessities  arising 
from  stage  representation.  Thus  there  is  a 
very  rigid  time  limitation,  a  division  into 
scenes  and  acts,  close  attention  to  the  action  of 
the  piece,  the  necessity  of  adapting  the  words 
to  the  positions  and  movements  of  the  actors, 
and  so  on.  These  limitations  are  joined  to 
the  necessity  of  making  the  whole  seem, 
to  the  audience,  natural  and  spontaneous, 
although  it  is  really  not  so.  All  this  makes 
drama  the  most  difficult  of  literary  forms, 
especially  when  it  is  written  in  poetry,  joining 
two  kinds  of  form  with  two  sets  of  limitations 
to  observe.  Writers  have  tried  to  emancipate 
themselves  from  the  tyranny  of  these  forms, 
but  they  are  based  on  obvious  necessities,  so 
little  can  be  done.  In  former  times  it  was 
considered  that  certain  "unities"  must  be 
observed,   chiefly   those   of   time   and   place. 


54  Earmarks  of  Literature 

According  to  these,  a  play  should  occupy  the 
same  time  that  the  action  represented  would 
really  occupy,  and  the  scene  should  not  shift 
about  from  place  to  place.  Such  limitations 
are  not  necessary,  and  hamper  the  writer 
unduly.  They  are  now  seldom  observed. 
Playwrights  suppose  years  to  elapse  between 
acts,  and  they  shift  the  scene  from  Africa  to 
Europe  without  warning. 

We  have  also  dramas  intended  not  to  be 
acted,  but  merely  to  be  read;  and  in  these 
the  writers  have  been  able  to  throw  off  the 
burden  of  dramatic  form  except  in  so  far  as 
they  desire  to  use  it  to  produce  their  effects. 
In  this  way  we  have  poems  in  the  "  form " 
of  drama  that  it  would  be  absurd  to  try  to 
act.  These  efforts  are  hybrids,  and  although 
some  of  the  greatest  figures  in  literature  have 
composed  them  they  rarely  make  a  universal 
appeal.  When  they  do  so,  it  is  usually  for 
reasons  unconnected  with  the  peculiar  form, 
as  in  the  case  of  works  like  Goethe's  Faust. 

Of  late  it  has  been  customary  to  rewrite 
popular  fiction  in  dramatic  form  and  enact  it 


Special  Literary  Forms  55 

on  the  stage.  Still  more  recently  popular 
plays  have  been  rewritten  as  novels.  These 
dramatized  novels  and  "novelized"  dramas 
labor  under  the  disadvantage  that  they  are 
translations  from  one  kind  of  literary  form  to 
another.  Such  translation  is  difficult,  though 
not  impossible,  and  it  has  not  generally  been 
executed  by  competent  hands.  The  original 
author  may  be  the  very  w^orst  person  to  do 
it,  for  he  generally  is  not  familiar  with  both 
forms.  Dramatization  has  been  more  success- 
ful than  "novelization"  because  the  play- 
wrights who  have  done  the  work  have  usually 
been  technically  competent.  "Novelization" 
has  so  far  been  successfully  accomplished 
rarely,  if  at  all.  And  neither  of  these  kinds 
of  transfer  from  one  literary  form  to  another 
is  well  calculated  to  produce  a  work  of 
literature. 

Oratory 

Like  the  playwright,  the  writer  of  an  ora- 
tion composes  not  to  be  read  but  to  be  listened 
to.  Besides  this  limitation  his  object  usually 
is  to  convince  his  hearers  of  something,  and 


56  Earmarks  of  Literature 

the  form  is  adapted  to  that  end.  Language 
that  is  to  be  heard,  not  read,  is  hampered  by 
the  fact  that  the  hearer  can  take  in  only  what 
the  speaker  is  saying  at  the  time;  he  cannot 
grasp  a  paragraph  at  a  glance,  nor  can  he 
look  ahead  at  all  to  see  what  is  coming.  Cer- 
tain constructions  allowable  in  written  speech, 
therefore,  are  objectionable  in  an  oration.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  speaker  has  an  opportunity 
of  making  his  meaning  clear,  by  emphasis  and 
intonation,  that  is  denied  to  the  writer;  so  that 
in  some  cases  a  passage  that  would  be  evident 
to  the  listener  reads  somewhat  obscurely. 

Again,  the  writer  of  words  that  are  to  be 
read,  not  heard,  must  reason  somewhat  closely 
and  pay  attention  to  his  points,  for  the  reader 
has  him  at  a  disadvantage.  His  words,  set 
down  in  black  and  white,  may  be  re-read, 
studied,  and  compared  with  what  is  said  on 
another  page.  This  cannot  be  done  by  a  lis- 
tener. It  is  easier,  therefore,  for  an  orator 
to  appeal  to  emotions  and  to  prejudices,  and 
this  is  often  done.  The  style  used  is  adapted 
to  this  aim,  and  in  reading  some  orations  that 


Special  Literary  Forms  57 

move  the  hearer  powerfully,  we  often  wonder 
what  could  possibly  have  produced  that  efifect. 
In  other  cases,  where  the  orator  and  his  audi- 
ence are  in  sympathy  from  the  start,  the 
wording  may  be  as  simple  as  possible,  and 
all  the  more  moving  for  its  simplicity.  This 
is  the  case  with  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  address. 
In  general,  to  get  the  full  effect  of  an  oration 
we  must  hear  it  recited,  just  as  to  get  the  full 
effect  of  a  play  we  must  see  it  acted  on  the 
stage. 

The  Novel 

Some  may  say  that  there  is  no  special  lit- 
erary form  appropriate  to  the  novel,  and  it 
is  true  that  it  is  the  freest  of  all  forms,  but 
the  writer  must  observe  certain  literary  rules, 
as  well  as  those  that  apply  directly  to  his 
management  of  the  story,  with  which  we  have 
nothing  to  do  here.  Some  of  these  rules  are 
apparently  unknown  to  writers  generally,  for 
they  are  constantly  broken.  Take,  for  in- 
stance, the  difference  between  a  passage 
merely  supposed  to  be  reported  by  the  writer 
and  one  actually  supposed  to  be  written  by 


58  Earmarks  of  Literature 

one  of  the  characters.  Novelists  often  make 
the  mistake  of  writing  down  a  letter  not  as 
the  writer  would  write  it,  but  as  it  might  be 
taken  down  by  someone  else.  For  instance, 
if  the  writer  is  a  cockney  he  is  made  to  write 
"  'alf "  for  half  and  "  hactive  "  for  active.  He 
would  pronounce  the  words  in  that  way,  but 
not  write  them. 

Characters  are  often  made  to  use  language 
unsuited  to  them,  and,  in  particular,  conver- 
sations are  often  stilted  and  unnatural.  We 
recognize  this  when  we  say  that  a  person 
*' talks  like  a  book."  Characters  in  a  book 
should  not  "talk  like  a  book"  if  they  are  to 
give  the  impression  of  naturalness. 

The  way  in  which  the  writer  of  a  novel 
treats  his  own  personality  is  responsible  for 
various  marked  forms  in  romance.  For 
example,  a  story  may  assume  the  form  of  an 
autobiography,  the  supposed  writer  being 
also  the  hero  or  heroine;  or  the  supposed 
writer  may  be  some  secondary  character  in 
the  story.  In  both  these  cases  there  is  much 
use  of  the  first  person,  and  the  narrator  is 


Special  Literary  Forms  59 

brought  into  the  foreground.  In  other  cases 
the  narrator  is  not  identified,  and  there  is 
nothing  in  the  novel  that  betrays  who  he  is  or 
how  he  knows  what  he  is  writing  about.  In 
other  books  the  narrator  frankly  puts  himself 
forward  from  time  to  time  as  the  writer  of  a 
fictitious  story.  He  speaks  of  "our  hero"  and 
discusses  the  tale  with  the  reader  in  such  a  way 
as  to  leave  no  illusion  of  reality.  This  is 
rather  an  old-fashioned  method  of  treatment. 

Whichever  treatment  is  selected,  the  writer 
must  be  consistent.  If  he  is  writing  as  the 
hero  he  should  not  describe  scenes  at  which 
he  was  not  present,  without  letting  the  reader 
know  how  he  was  informed  of  them.  If  he 
tells  the  story  as  a  real  series  of  events  written 
by  a  real  person,  he  should  not  drop  into  the 
character  of  an  avowed  narrator  of  fiction. 
These  are  all  special  forms,  although  the  lack 
of  formality  in  them  makes  it  difficult  to 
recognize  them  as  such. 

This  is  enough  to  show,  perhaps,  that  a 
novel  writer  cannot  altogether  ignore  literary 
form.    The  limitations  under  which  he  works, 


60  Earmarks  of  Literature 

however,  are  so  vague  and  peculiar  that  he 
usually  does  disregard  them.  Readers  are 
often  at  a  loss  to  know  why  one  novel  is  good 
and  another  bad,  why  one  interests  him  and 
holds  his  attention  while  the  other  does  not. 
Aside  from  considerations  connected  with  the 
character  of  the  story,  the  reason  may  often 
be  found  in  the  superior  care  with  which  the 
better  writer,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  has 
adhered  to  the  literary  form  that  is  proper 
for  a  prose  romance. 


p 


CHAPTER  VII 

On  the  Reading  of  Poetry  Aloud 

OETRY  is  essentially  a  form  of  spoken, 
not  of  written  language.  Its  elements 
depend  on  the  sound  of  words,  not  on  their 
appearance  on  the  printed  page.  An  occa- 
sional attempt  by  the  poets  to  introduce  "  eye- 
rhymes,"  as  of  "  cough  "  with  "  bough,"  or  the 
like,  has  not  met  with  favor.  One  who  reads 
verse  silently  to  himself  must  at  least  imagine 
the  sound  of  the  words  if  he  is  to  appreciate 
it  as  poetry.  The  very  fact  that  it  is  poetry 
instead  of  prose  implies  fitness  for  reading 
aloud  or  for  recitation. 

Now,  there  are  those  who  counsel  the 
readers  of  poetry  to  treat  it  precisely  like  prose 
—  to  make  no  pauses  or  to  give  no  accents 
that  would  not  be  made  or  given  if  the  passage 
were  not  poetry  at  all.  From  one  point  of 
view  this  is  just.  In  poetry  words  should  be 
so  arranged  that  the  natural  accents  fall  into 

61 


62  Earmarks  of  Literature 

rhythmic  sequence,  so  that  if  read  naturally 
the  fact  that  the  passage  is  poetry  appears  at 
once,  and  the  effect  on  the  listener  is  that  of 
poetry,  not  prose.  There  are  passages  that 
may  be  treated  in  just  this  way.  It  would  be 
hard,  for  instance,  to  read  such  verses  as  this 
without  showing  that  they  are  poetry: 

On  Linden,  when  the  sun  was  low, 
All  bloodless  lay  the  untrodden  snow, 
And  dark  as  winter  was  the  flow 
Of  Iser,  rolling  rapidly. 

Or  this: 

The  little  toy  dog  is  covered  with  dust, 
Yet  sturdy  and  stanch  he  stands; 
And  the  little  tin  soldier  is  red  with  rust 
And  his  musket  moulds  in  his  hands. 

In  both  of  these  extracts  the  rhyme  aids 
the  meter  in  marking  off  the  lines  and  empha- 
sizing the  poetical  character  of  the  composi- 
tion. If  either  were  written  as  prose,  the 
reader  would  not  go  far  before  finding  that 
he  was  being  tricked.     For  instance: 

On  Linden,  when  the  sun  was  low,  all  bloodless 


Reading  Poetry  Aloud  63^ 

lay  the  untrodden  snow,  and  dark  as  winter  was 
the  flow  of  Iser,  rolling  rapidly. 

This  reminds  one  of  the  paragraphs  in  the 
newspapers  where  verse  is  printed  as  prose  to 
enhance  its  humorous  effect.  If  all  poetry 
were  carefully  constructed  with  a  view  to  this 
kind  of  reading,  the  advice  to  disregard  its 
structure  would  be  sound.  But  it  is  not  so. 
Consider  the  following  passage: 

To  him  who  in  the  love  of  Nature  holds 
Communion  with  her  visible  forms,  she  speaks 
A  various  language. 

Here  there  is  no  rhyme  and  no  rhetorical 
pause  at  the  end  of  either  line.  If  it  were 
written  as  prose,  the  reader  who  did  not  pre- 
viously know  that  it  was  verse  might  have 
difficulty  in  recognizing  it  as  such.    Thus: 

To  him  who,  In  the  love  of  Nature,  holds  com- 
munion with  her  visible  forms,  she  speaks  a  vari- 
ous language. 

Here  the  trouble  is  largely  with  the  length 
of  the  lines,  the  distribution  of  pauses  and  the 
lack  of   rhyme.     But  in   poetry  in  general. 


64  Earmarks  of  Literature 

besides  syllables  that  call  for  an  accent  and 
those  that  demand  to  be  left  unaccented,  there 
are  others  that  may  or  may  not  receive  stress, 
at  the  reader's  will.  Even  in  the  strict  and 
formal  quantitative  verse  of  the  ancients,  there 
were  "common"  or  doubtful  quantities  as 
well  as  long  and  short  ones.  Besides  this, 
much  verse  is  purposely  rugged,  and  disre- 
gards accent  more  or  less;  and  its  rhythmic 
quality  depends  on  the  watchfulness  of  the 
reader  in  bringing  out  stress  in  places  where 
it  would  not  be  given  in  the  natural  reading 
of  prose.  Of  course,  this  requires  judgment. 
If  the  reader  remembers  simply  that  what  he 
reads  has  rhythm  and  forgets  that  it  has  also 
sense,  his  reading  will  degenerate  into  a  mean- 
ingless sing-song.  If  he  regards  the  sense  and 
forgets  the  rhythm  it  will  often  sound  like 
plain  prose,  and  rather  odd  prose  at  that. 
Oftener  still  the  listener  will  be  annoyed  and 
pained  by  an  involuntary  effort  to  catch  the 
rhythm,  which  prevents  his  enjoyment  of  the 
verse  as  a  whole. 

This  is  what  makes  the  reading  of  poetry 


Reading  Poetry  Aloud  65 

difficult.  What,  for  instance,  shall  the  reader 
do  at  the  end  of  a  line  where  there  is  no 
rhetorical  pause?  If  he  reads  straight  ahead, 
he  goes  far  towards  turning  the  verse  into 
prose.  If  he  pauses,  he  spoils  the  sense  and 
makes  his  performance  childish  and  ridicu- 
lous. It  is  possible  for  him  to  indicate  the 
meter  and  the  succession  of  lines  —  now  by  an 
almost  unnoticeable  pause,  now  by  an  inflec- 
tion of  voice  —  so  that  the  listener  may  recog- 
nize the  metric  quality  of  what  he  hears 
without  being  conscious  that  there  is  inter- 
ference with  the  sense.  The  art  of  the  great 
actor,  in  declaiming  Shakespearean  or  other 
metrical  drama,  depends  largely  upon  pre- 
cisely this  ability. 

Some  lines  of  poetry  may  be  interpreted 
rhythmically  in  more  than  one  way.  The 
other  lines  in  the  stanza  generally  give  the 
key,  but  the  reader  might  read  the  line  in 
more  than  one  way  if  it  stood  by  itself.  Those 
who  believe  that  the  reader  should  not  con- 
cern himself  with  the  meter  will  not  object  to 
this,  but  if  the  meter  is  to  be  brought  out  in 


66  Earmarks  of  Literature 

reading  it  is  important  for  the  reader  to  know 
what  it  is.  Sometimes  he  meets  with  this  kind 
of  line  at  the  very  beginning  of  his  selection, 
and  these  doubtful  lines,  owing  to  the  pecu- 
liarities of  English  poetry,  are  specially  easy 
to  write  in  our  language. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  first  line  of  Enid's 
celebrated  and  beautiful  song  in  Tennyson's 
Idylls: 

Turn,  Fortune,  turn  thy  wheel,  and  lower  the 
proud 

This  may  be  read,  or  sung,  in  at  least  three 
ways,  having,  respectively,  six,  five,  and  seven 
"  feet,"  as  follows : 

Tu'rn — I  Fo'r-tune  |  tu'rn  thy  |  wh'eel  and  | 
loVer  the  |  pr'oud  — 

Turn,  F'or  |  tune  tu'rn  |  thy  wh'eel  |  and  loV  | 
er  the  pro'ud 

Tu'rn —  I  Fo'r-tune  |  tu'rn  thy  |  wh'eel —  | 
-i-and  I  lo'wer  the  |  pr'oud  — 

From  one  standpoint,  these  ambiguous  lines 
are  objectionable ;  from  another  the  ambiguity 
may  be  thought  an  additional  beauty.     The 


Reading  Poetry  Aloud  67 

rhythm  shifts  and  changes  as  we  think  of  it, 
so  that  to  the  steadfast  progress  of  the  meter 
is  added  a  sinuous  motion,  which  may  either 
exasperate  or  fascinate. 

In  composing  music  for  the  lines  of  a  poet, 
musicians  have  generally  taken  great  liberties 
with  his  meter,  so  that  the  rhythm  of  the  lines 
when  sung  is  not  at  all  that  as  read,  which  is 
that  bestowed  on  them  by  the  author. 
Musicians  think  that  this  alteration  is  justifi- 
able and  that  it  even  lends  additional  beauty 
to  the  words,  probably  on  the  theory  just 
suggested.  Instances  will  occur  to  anyone. 
It  is  a  fact  that  the  number  of  meters  com- 
monly used  for  singing  is  small;  and  if  com- 
posers followed  them  slavishly  in  their  music 
monotony  would  result.  Perhaps  this  is  the 
fault  of  the  poets  in  not  devising  and  using 
new  meters.  This  has  been  done  notably  by 
Kipling,  some  of  whose  rhythms  seem  to  have 
been  borrowed  from  musical  forms  —  often 
from  dance  music.  The  Last  Chantey  is  a 
conspicuous  instance. 

Unfortunately,  many  of  our  best  songs  — 


68  Earmarks  of  Literature 

practically  all  those  in  operatic  music  —  are 
by  foreigners,  and  the  words  have  to  be 
translated.  It  is  most  difficult  to  translate 
poetry;  and  when  in  addition  the  translation 
must  be  adapted  to  precisely  the  same  music 
as  the  original,  the  task  becomes  impossible. 
The  translator  is  generally  content  with  writ- 
ing another  song  that  expresses  the  sentiments 
of  the  original,  but  in  entirely  different  words. 
This  is  the  reason  why  the  English  words  of 
foreign  operas  and  of  most  songs  by  French 
or  German  composers  are  apt  to  be  trivial 
or  silly.  This  is  unfortunate,  because  it  has 
led  music-lovers  to  disregard  the  words  in 
vocal  music  and  to  dwell  wholly  on  the 
musical  setting.  In  reality  singing  is  a  special 
case  of  reading  poetry  aloud.  The  music 
should  aid  in  interpreting  the  words,  so  that 
a  poem,  properly  set  to  music  and  properly 
sung,  should  mean  more  to  the  listener  than 
if  it  were  simply  read.  Wagner  was  the  first 
writer  of  operas  to  realize  this,  and  his  music 
cannot  be  fully  appreciated  unless  the  words 
are  heard  and  understood. 


Reading  Poetry  Aloud  69 

The  listener  who  finds  himself  bored  by  the 
long  monologues  in  Wagner's  music-dramas, 
those  of  Wotan  in  Siegfried,  for  instance,  is 
usually  he  who  does  not  understand  the  words, 
or  does  not  attend  to  them,  and  expects  to  be 
impressed  by  the  music  alone.  This  is  true 
also  of  the  typical  recitative  of  the  Italian 
opera,  only  here  the  composer  himself,  in  too 
many  instances,  disregarded  the  words,  which 
are  often  trivial  even  in  the  original  tongue, 
and  quite  worthless  in  translation. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

Our  Two  Languages 

THE  very  derivation  of  the  word  "liter- 
ature"—  from  the  Latin  litera,  a  letter 
—  implies  that  it  has  to  do  with  written  lan- 
guage. Most  persons  think  that  written 
language  is  merely  spoken  language  set  down 
in  black  and  white.  In  some  cases  it  is  this, 
in  others  it  is  something  very  different.  The 
two  methods  of  expressing  ideas  are  different 
in  their  origins.  When  it  became  necessary 
to  express  ideas  by  sounds,  such  expression 
arose  in  various  ways.  Some  think  that  the 
earliest  attempt  at  speech  was  when  the  sound 
made  by  an  animal  was  adopted  as  its  name, 
as  when  the  baby  calls  a  dog  a  "bow-wow." 
However  this  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  the 
first  attempt  to  make  a  written  sign  for  a 
thing  had  nothing  to  do  with  any  sound  made 
by  or  in  connection  with  that  thing,  but  was 
simply  a  rude  picture  of  it.     Such  pictures, 

70 


Our  Two  Languages  71 

greatly  conventionalized,  and  so  modified  as 
to  have  lost  their  value  as  pictures  altogether, 
are  still  used  in  some  parts  of  the  world;  for 
instance,  in  China,  where  there  is  no  alphabet, 
in  our  sense  of  the  word,  every  character 
standing  for  a  whole  word.  This  seems 
absurd  and  difficult  to  us.  It  seems  vastly 
easier  to  learn  twenty-six  characters  than  to 
become  familiar  with  thousands;  yet  we  must 
remember  that  the  practiced  reader  of  any 
language  reads  his  words  as  wholes  and  rec- 
ognizes each  without  stopping  to  separate  it 
mentally  into  its  letters.  So  that  we  read  in 
the  Chinese  fashion  after  all;  and  children 
are  generally  so  taught  in  modern  schools. 

Our  letters,  each  of  which  is  supposed  to 
stand  for  a  sound,  arose  from  the  adoption  of 
these  picture-characters  to  represent,  in  each 
case,  the  sound  with  which  the  spoken  name 
of  the  pictured  character  began.  In  lan- 
guages that  use  an  alphabet,  therefore,  the 
written  and  spoken  forms  were,  at  the  time 
of  its  adoption,  closely  correspondent,  while 
in  Japanese  and  Chinese,  for  instance,  they 


72  Earmarks  of  Literature 

may  be  widely  different.  Two  Chinese,  whose 
dialects  sound  to  each  other  like  foreign 
tongues,  may  understand  each  other  clearly 
in  writing.  So  a  Frenchman  who  pronounced 
English  very  badly  might  be  totally  unable 
to  make  you  understand  him;  yet  when  he 
wrote  the  words  down  they  would  be  intel- 
ligible at  once.  In  Chinese  the  character  does 
not  represent  the  sound  of  a  word  signifying 
a  thing;  it  stands  for  the  thing  itself.  In 
English  the  written  word  "  cow"  not  only  sig- 
nifies the  animal  but  it  also  stands  for  the 
combination  of  sounds  that  forms  the  spoken 
word  "  cow." 

So,  in  the  beginning,  that  is,  when  English 
words  first  began  to  be  written  in  Roman  let- 
ters, there  were  for  every  word  three  things 
that  closely  corresponded: 

1.  The  object  or  idea  signified. 

2.  The  spoken  word. 

3.  The  written  word. 

These  things  at  once  began  to  change,  so 
as  to  make  their  continued  correspondence 


Our  Two  Languages  73 

difficult.  The  degrees  of  change  depended  on 
circumstances.  In  some  cases  the  object  itself 
changed  hardly  at  all;  in  others,  it  is  quite  a 
different  thing  now  from  what  it  was  when 
its  name  began  to  be  spelled.  A  house,  for 
instance,  is  not  now  the  same  as  a  house  in  the 
tenth  century,  nor  is  a  ship  or  a  hat;  although 
a  horse  is  practically  the  same.  Some  things 
have  changed  so  utterly  that  we  must  have 
new  names  for  them,  though  the  tendency  is 
to  retain  the  old  ones.  And  we  have  a  host 
of  new  things  altogether,  for  some  of  which 
we  have  made  new  names,  while  we  have 
simply  applied  old  ones  to  others.  So  our 
modern  dictionaries  are  complicated  affairs. 
We  see  from  them  that  a  single  word  may 
have  scores  of  meanings  and  that  a  single 
object  or  idea  may  be  expressed  by  any  one 
of  a  dozen  different  words. 

The  spoken  word  also  has  changed,  always 
a  little,  sometimes  utterly.  This  we  usually 
call  change  of  "  pronunciation."  It  used  to  be 
a  difficult  thing  to  record.  We  try  to  do  it 
now  by  scientific   alphabets   and   diacritical 


74  Earmarks  of  Literature 

marks,  but  we  have  a  better  way  still  —  the 
phonograph.  Museums  of  records  are  being 
formed  abroad  to  store  up  data  about  present- 
day  pronunciation.  Unfortunately,  we  have 
none  yet  in  this  country. 

If  the  material  of  the  records  lasts,  our 
great-great  grandchildren  will  know  how  we 
talked.  As  for  us,  we  absolutely  do  not  know 
how  our  great-great  grandsires  talked,  except 
that  they  talked  very  differently  from  us.  We 
think  the  Irish  "brogue"  a  queer  thing,  but 
it  is  believed  that  the  Irish  still  talk  English 
as  our  ancestors  taught  it  to  them ;  their  brogue 
is  the  spoken  tongue  of  seventeenth-century 
Englishmen. 

The  written  word  is  unchangeable,  or  it 
would  be  if  we  were  to  let  it  alone.  We 
probably  should  let  it  alone  if,  like  the  Chi- 
nese character,  it  represented  an  idea  rather 
than  the  sound  of  a  spoken  word.  As  it  is, 
we  are  not  only  introducing  new  words  to 
signify  new  things,  but  we  are  altering  the 
spelling  of  our  written  words  in  an  attempt 
to  follow  the  changes  of  sound  in  our  spoken 


Our  Two  Languages  75 

words.  If  the  spoken  words  are  the  important 
things,  perhaps  this  is  defensible,  but  from 
the  standpoint  of  literature  the  written  word 
is  the  important  thing;  we  use  it  for  recording 
thought,  and  if  we  are  going  to  change  it  the 
time  will  come  when  we  shall  not  be  able  to 
read  our  records. 

The  alteration  of  spelling  to  fit  the  changed 
sounds  of  words  is  often  called  spelling 
reform.  Reform  is,  or  should  be,  the  restora- 
tion of  some  good  thing  that  has  been  changed 
or  lost.  In  this  instance  the  thing  that  has 
changed  is  the  sound  of  the  word  —  the  pro- 
nunciation. If  there  is  to  be  reform,  then,  we 
should  go  back  to  the  old  sound  —  not  make  a 
further  change  by  altering  the  spelling. 

Writing  has  done  much  to  keep  one  form 
of  language  steady.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the 
phonograph  is  going  to  do  the  same  thing  for 
the  spoken  form.  If  this  should  prove  to  be 
the  case,  the  problem  that  some  have  attempted 
to  solve  by  what  is  called  "spelling  reform" 
may  ultimately  cease  to  present  itself. 


w 


CHAPTER  IX 

The  Structure   of  Literature 

E  ARE  apt  to  think  of  all  written 
language  as  made  up  of  letters  more 
or  less  like  our  own.  We  know  that  many 
foreign  alphabets  closely  resemble  ours.  Such 
are  the  German,  the  Russian,  even  the  Greek; 
and  we  assume  that  other  characters,  such  as 
those  used  by  the  Chinese  and  Japanese,  or 
the  Hebrew  and  Arabic  characters,  are  of  the 
same  nature.  This  is  not  the  case.  Hebrew 
and  Arabic  have  characters  to  represent 
consonants  only.  Chinese  and  Japanese 
characters  are  not  letters  —  the  Chinese  are 
ideographs  and  the  Japanese  represent  not 
elementary  sounds,  but  syllables.  In  Chinese 
every  word  is  monosyllabic,  so  that  the  char- 
acters represent  also  words. 

Modern  languages  are  of  three  kinds,  rep- 
resenting, it  is  thought,  three  different  stages 
of  development.    There  is  the  syllabic  stage, 

76 


The  Structure  of  Literature  77 

when  every  word  has  one  syllable,  and  ideas 
are  expressed  by  stringing  these  one-syllabled 
words  along  without  changing  any  of  them. 
Such  is  the  Chinese.  In  Chinese  there  are  no 
separate  "  parts  of  speech,"  as  we  understand 
these  words,  and  no  grammar.  The  Chinese, 
for  instance,  instead  of  saying,  "  At  what  time 
do  you  go  to  bed?"  says,  "You  here  all  are 
what  time  sleep  feel?"  If  he  wishes  to  say, 
"To  wash  the  hands  and  face  is  a  necessary 
part  of  each  day's  work,"  he  puts  it:  "Wash 
hands  wash  face  this  is  day  day  less  not  finish 
of  affair." 

Secondly,  we  have  languages  where  the 
syllables  denoting  different  ideas  are  fastened 
together  with  some  degree  of  permanence  to 
denote  complex  ideas.  These  are  called 
agglutinative  tongues  —  languages  where  the 
elements  are  simply  "stuck  together,"  as  it 
were.  The  American  Indian  languages  were 
all  of  this  type,  and  the  Japanese  is  now  its 
foremost  representative.  Some  words  in  Eng- 
lish are  agglutinative.  Prof.  W.  D.  Whitney 
gives  "  un-tru-th-ful-ly,"  as  an  example.  Here 


78  Earmarks  of  Literature 

each  syllable  has  its  meaning.  In  Japanese, 
the  combination  of  separate  root-words,  which 
is  very  common,  does  not  tend  to  produce 
formative  elements,  as  it  does  with  us. 
Turkish  is  similarly  agglutinative,  but  with 
greater  complexity,  admitting  such  intricate 
derivatives  as  "sev-ish-dir-il-e-me-mek"  — 
*'  Not  to  be  capable  of  being  made  to  love  one 
another." 

Lastly,  we  have  inflected  speech,  where 
a  word  is  modified,  either  by  altering  the 
root  somewhat,  or  using  prefixes  or  suffixes 
with  it  to  denote  changed  relationships.  All 
of  the  languages  commonly  studied  in  our 
schools,  both  ancient  and  modern,  are  of  this 
type.  In  Greek,  Latin,  Spanish,  Italian,  or 
French,  the  verb  has  different  forms  for  its 
different  moods  and  tenses,  the  noun  for  its 
different  cases,  the  adjective  for  its  degrees  — 
all  made  in  this  way.  It  may  be  that  these 
changes  are  all  that  remain  of  an  original 
agglutinative  process,  and  that  prefixes,  case- 
endings,  mood-signs,  etc.,  were  once  separate 
syllabic  words.    In  his  interesting  book  about 


The  Structure  of  Literature  79 

the  Eskimos,  Vilhjalmur  Stefansson  indicates 
that  their  tongue  has  both  inflectional  and 
agglutinative  features,  and  is  possibly  chang- 
ing from  the  latter  to  the  former  type. 

It  is  not  so  certain,  however,  as  was  once 
supposed,  that  these  three  forms  of  language 
are  three  definite  stages  through  which  all 
language  has  passed.  The  most  highly  in- 
flected tongues  are  not  the  most  modern,  but 
languages  like  Homeric  Greek,  that  were 
spoken  thousands  of  years  ago.  The  modern 
languages  are  dropping  off  their  inflections, 
and  our  own  language  has  in  many  respects 
ceased  to  be  an  inflected  tongue  at  all.  There 
is  no  separate  form  for  the  objective  case  ex- 
cept in  pronouns,  and  the  only  noun  inflection 
is  for  the  possessive.  Even  here  the  idea  of 
possession  can  also  be  expressed  by  the  use  of 
the  preposition  ''  of,"  and  there  is  some  reason 
to  think  that  this  non-inflected  possessive  is 
driving  the  other  out.  Most  of  our  verb  rela- 
tions are  expressed,  not  by  inflection,  but  by 
the  use  of  auxiliaries  —  such  as  the  simple 
verbs  "  to  be,"  "  to  do,"  and  ''  to  have."    We 


80  Earmarks  of  Literature 

denote  future  action,  not  by  adding  an  ending 
to  the  root  of  our  verb,  but  by  using  the  aux- 
iliary verbs  "  shall "  and  "will."  For  past  ac- 
tion we  may  still  use  an  inflected  form,  made 
either  by  changing  the  vowel  in  the  root,  as 
from  "speak"  to  "spoke,"  or  by  adding  -ed, 
as  in  the  words  "  granted"  or  "shocked."  But 
we  may  also  express  the  same  idea  by  the 
past  tense  of  the  auxiliary  verb  "do"  —  "did 
speak,"  "  did  grant,"  etc. 

This  loss  of  inflectional  forms  is  recent.  In 
its  earliest  written  form,  generally  known  as 
"Anglo-Saxon,"  English  is  almost  as  fully 
inflected  as  Latin. 

It  also  looks  as  if,  besides  losing  our  inflec- 
tions, the  distinction  between  our  parts  of 
speech  were  becoming  weaker.  It  may  even 
be  said  that  there  is  no  part  of  speech  in 
English  that  may  not  be  used  in  place  of  any 
other  part,  at  least  colloquially.  Thus,  we 
use  verbs  as  nouns,  as  when  we  speak  of  the 
"kill"  of  a  lion  or  the  "take"  of  a  compos- 
itor; nouns  as  verbs,  as  when  we  "motor"  or 
"dust;"  nouns  as  adjectives,  in  speaking  of  a 


The  Structure  of  Literature  81 

"concrete"  house  or  an  "angel"  child,  and 
so  on.  In  this  respect,  therefore,  English  is 
getting  more  like  Chinese,  and  it  has  been 
suggested  that  the  lack  of  grammar  in  such  a 
language  may  be  a  sign  of  age  and  not  of 
undeveloped  youth. 

To  go  back  to  the  written  forms  of  lan- 
guage, the  syllabic  and  agglutinative  tongues 
usually  employ  not  alphabets  but  syllabaries. 
Naturally  this  requires  a  vast  number  of  char- 
acters. In  Chinese  there  are  in  the  great 
standard  dictionary  no  less  than  41,000  one- 
syllabled  words,  each  of  which  has  its  separate 
character.  For  ordinary  purposes  it  is  suffi- 
cient to  learn  about  2,500  to  3,500  of  these 
characters. 

In  Japanese  there  are  two  syllabaries  —  the 
Katakana,  which  is  the  simpler,  and  the 
Hiragana,  which  is  the  more  popular,  as  it 
can  be  written  more  smoothly  and  continu- 
ously, like  the  letters  used  in  our  "hand- 
writing." Each  of  the  Japanese  characters 
represents  a  consonant  combined  with  a  vowel, 
so  that  they  may  be  learned  in  series  —  ba,  be, 


82  Earmarks  of  Literature 

bi,  bo,  bu;  ta,  te,  ti,  to,  tu,  etc.,  which  makes 
them  more  systematic  than  the  Chinese. 

An  alphabet  is  usually  regarded  as  more 
convenient  than  a  syllabary,  but  it  is  not  so 
much  so  as  we  are  apt  to  think.  No  experi- 
enced reader  picks  out  the  separate  letters  of 
the  alphabet  that  form  a  word.  He  recognizes 
the  word  as  a  whole,  just  as  he  would  do  if  it 
were  represented  by  one  character,  as  in  Chi- 
nese, or  by  one  for  each  of  its  syllables,  as  in 
Japanese.  Arabic  has  an  alphabet,  but  the 
vowels  have  no  corresponding  letters,  being 
represented  by  points  over  the  consonants  with 
which  they  are  associated.  A  consonant,  with 
its  vowel  point,  thus  very  nearly  takes  the 
place  of  a  syllabic  character  such  as  those  of 
the  Japanese  syllabaries.  In  ancient  Hebrew, 
which  is  of  the  same  family  of  languages  as 
the  Arabic,  even  the  points  for  the  vowels 
were  omitted,  and  the  vowel  had  to  be  guessed. 
Here  we  have  a  sliding  scale  connecting  the 
syllabaries  with  the  alphabets,  starting  with 
a  pure  ideographic  syllabary  like  the  Chinese 
and  running  through  the  Japanese,  by  way  of 


The  Structure  of  Literature  83 

the  Hebrew  and  Arabic,  down  to  alphabets 
of  the  modern  form.  Even  these  have  some 
peculiarities  that  connect  them  with  the  sylla- 
baries. The  names  of  our  consonants,  for 
instance.  Be,  De,  Ef,  Jay,  etc.,  are  purely  syl- 
labic. Then,  some  of  them  represent  not  simple 
sounds  but  combinations.  In  the  Russian  al- 
phabet there  is  a  single  character  for  the 
sound  represented  in  English  by  ch,  as  in 
**  church."  French  requires  three  letters  for 
this  sound,  namely  tch,  and  German  has  to 
use  four  —  tsch.  The  English  letter  "j"  rep- 
resents a  complex  sound  which  in  French  re- 
quires dj  to  express  it. 

If  our  spelling  were  strictly  phonetic  —  one 
sound  to  a  letter  and  one  letter  to  a  sound  —  an 
alphabet  would  be  much  preferable  to  a  sylla- 
bary, not  for  ordinary  reading,  but  in  indicat- 
ing the  pronunciation  of  a  strange  word  and 
in  assisting  the  learner  to  some  extent.  As  it 
is,  it  is  often  but  a  stumbling  block. 

Since  the  introduction  of  western  learning, 
Chinese  and  Japanese,  especially  the  latter, 
are  sometimes  written  with  the  Roman  alpha- 


84  Earmarks  of  Literature 

bet.  It  is  not  possible  to  do  this,  or  indeed  to 
use  any  alphabet  or  syllabary  in  place  of  any 
other,  without  making  some  arbitrary  rules 
to  govern  the  change.  No  two  persons  would 
do  it  in  the  same  way.  Such  changes  have 
been  productive  of  much  confusion. 

Even  in  so  simple  a  matter  as  the  writing 
of  Russian  in  Roman  characters,  there  are 
several  different  systems  in  use.  The  same 
Russian  termination,  for  instance,  is  written 
as  oif,  ov,  and  ow.  The  same  Russian  letter 
appears  as  ch,  tch,  and  tsch.  This  is  due 
partly  to  the  fact  that  the  Roman  letters,  as 
used  in  different  tongues,  do  not  always  have 
the  same  value. 

Commercial  contact  and  the  necessities  of 
trade  are  operating  in  all  these  things  in  a 
direction  contrary  to  the  requirements  of  lit- 
erature as  an  art.  Commerce  and  communi- 
cation demand  the  unification  of  alphabets, 
the  abolition  of  syllabaries,  even  the  fusing 
of  languages.  But  from  the  artistic  standpoint 
these  things  should  not  be.  The  Arabs,  for  in- 
stance, have  developed  a  beautiful  language 


The  Structure  of  Literature  85 

with  a  fine,  characteristic  literature  corre- 
sponding to  their  inborn  and  inbred  character, 
customs,  and  modes  of  thought.  Their  al- 
phabet and  mode  of  writing  is  part  of  it.  The 
translation  of  such  a  tongue  makes  it  lose  its 
atmosphere;  even  its  transliteration  into 
Roman  alphabetic  signs  destroys  its  peculiar 
color  to  the  eye.  From  the  standpoint  of  lit- 
erature as  an  art,  these  should  be  preserved. 
We  have  seen  that  in  literature  the  way  of 
doing  things  is  all-important;  and  things  have 
been  said  and  written  in  the  Chinese,  Arabic, 
and  Bengali  languages  and  characters  in  a 
way  that  never  would  have  existed  had  those 
nations  spoken  English  and  used  the  Roman 

alphabet. 

This  tendency  of  commercial  needs  to  de- 
stroy literary  values  has  led  to  the  plan  —  it 
is  hardly  more  than  a  dream  yet — of  an  arti- 
ficial world-language.  If  we  had  this  kind  of 
a  language  business  might  be  transacted  in  it 
without  injuring  the  separate  use  and  develop- 
ment of  local  languages  and  literatures. 

Unfortunately,  no  artificial  language  has 


86  Earmarks  of  Literature 

yet  been  constructed  that  has  met,  or  is  likely 
to  meet,  with  universal  approval.  Language 
is  a  thing  of  growth,  not  of  invention.  In 
other  fields,  to  be  sure,  man  has  replaced 
things  that  grow  with  things  specially  devised 
and  constructed.  Machines  are  everywhere 
taking  the  place  of  animals  or  of  man  himself. 
There  is  no  inherent  reason  why  an  invented 
language  should  not  prove  satisfactory.  But 
it  took  long  years  to  introduce  machinery,  and 
we  may  expect  that  invented  tongues  will  ex- 
perience the  same  opposition  and  inertia. 
Probably  the  particular  line  of  least  resist- 
ance has  not  yet  been  found.  Volapuk,  once 
a  promising  candidate,  is  now  little  regarded. 
Esperanto,  after  making  much  progress,  is 
being  discarded  by  many  for  Ido,  which  they 
regard  as  an  improvement.  All  these  tongues 
are  yet  in  the  laboratory  stage.  They  are  not 
actually  "  on  the  market." 


CHAPTER  X 

Literature  as  a  Form  of  Art 

ART  aims  to  make  a  special  appeal  to  the 
feelings  as  opposed  to  the  reasoning 
powers.  This  is  true  of  literature  as  a  form 
of  art,  just  as  it  is  of  painting  or  sculpture 
or  music.  This  is  why,  as  we  have  seen  above, 
the  way  of  doing  is  more  important  than  the 
subject-matter  in  literature,  for  it  is  so  with 
all  arts  that  have  a  subject-matter — with 
what  are  called  representative  arts.  Such  arts 
are  painting  and  sculpture,  in  so  far  as  they 
represent  actual  objects,  as  opposed  to  music, 
which  represents  nothing  but  itself,  or  to 
merely  geometrical  decoration.  If  the  sub- 
ject-matter were  of  prime  importance  in  such 
art,  then  one  statuette  of  a  wolf  would  be  as 
good  as  another,  all  paintings  of  Pike's  Peak 
would  be  of  equal  merit,  and  so  on.  In  non- 
representative  arts,  like  music  or  some  forms 
of  decoration,  as  there  is  no  subject-matter, 

87 


88  Earmarks  of  Literature 

no  representation  of  anything  else,  the  art  is 
all  manner;  there  is  nothing  at  all  to  it  except 
the  way  in  which  it  is  done. 

Music,  to  be  sure,  has  occasionally  made 
an  effort  to  represent  something  —  the  songs 
of  birds,  or  the  noise  of  a  battle,  perhaps. 
Such  music  belongs  to  the  type  known  as 
"program  music,"  and  if  we  admit  its  claims 
to  legitimacy  we  may  say  precisely  the  same 
thing  about  it  as  about  painting  and  sculp- 
ture—  otherwise  the  music  sung  by  the  bird 
in  Wagner's  music-drama  of  Siegfried  would 
be  no  whit  better  than  the  melody  of  "The 
Mocking  Bird." 

When  we  say,  therefore,  that  the  manner 
and  not  the  matter  of  a  poem  or  an  essay  makes 
it  literature,  we  are  merely  citing  a  special 
case  of  a  general  rule  that  applies  to  all  art. 

And  it  is  only  the  same  rule,  stated  a  little 
differently,  that  limits  the  effect  of  art,  as  art, 
to  its  action  on  the  feelings.  Art  may  make 
us  feel  in  various  ways.  It  may  aroi^se  grief, 
anger,  joy,  or  admiration.  It  may  be  simply 
beautiful,  but  it  may  also  be  touching,  amus- 


Literature  as  a  Form  of  Art  89 

ing,  or  inspiring.  But  it  cannot  prove  a  prop- 
osition. It  may  cause  you  to  believe  that  a 
proposition  is  true,  but  it  does  so  through  the 
feelings,  not  through  the  intellect.  And  of 
a  purely  intellectual  proposition,  such  as  are 
those  of  mathematics,  it  has  nothing  to  say. 
Now,  the  reason  for  this,  as  has  been  noted 
in  another  chapter,  is  that  the  artist  puts  him- 
self into  his  art;  he  makes  us  see  his  subject 
through  his  own  eyes.  We  feel  terror  when 
we  see  a  lion  about  to  spring;  and  even  a  pho- 
tograph may  remind  us  of  the  reality  and  so 
recall  that  terror;  but  in  the  springing  lion 
of  a  great  sculptor  we  feel  also  the  artist's 
terror,  something  that  he  puts  into  his  work 
and  that  his  work  transmits  to  us.  The  only 
way  in  which  one  artist  can  work  thus  on  our 
feelings  while  another  cannot,  is  by  his  way  of 
doing  what  he  does.  We  are  terrified  not  be- 
cause we  see  something  that  the  artist  intended 
to  represent  a  lion,  but  because  he  put  some- 
thing terrific  into  the  representation.  This 
is  all  true  of  literary  art  as  it  is  of  other  kinds. 
Why  is  there  something  terrifying  about  cer- 


90  Earmarks  of  Literature 

tain  stories  by  Poe — The  Pit  and  the  Pen- 
dulum or  The  Black  Cat?  We  may  think 
that  it  is  what  Poe  is  telling  about  that  terri- 
fies us,  but  this  is  merely  the  vehicle  of  his 
art.  An  artist  who  desires  to  inspire  terror 
naturally  selects  a  subject  that  is  capable  of 
being  treated  so  as  to  bring  about  this  re- 
sult; but  whether  it  really  does  inspire  terror 
or  not  depends  on  how  he  treats  it.  An  in- 
ferior writer  might  select  precisely  the  same 
subjects  and  incidents  and  only  make  his  read- 
ers laugh. 

/  Another  thing  is  true  of  literature  as  a  form 
of  art  —  it  does  not  have  to  represent  nature 
exactly.  Written  speech  that  professes  to  de- 
scribe nature  must  do  so,  of  course,  but  this 
is  usually  science  or  travel  and  not  generally 
pure  literature,  though  it  may  be.  A  literary 
masterpiece  may  be  entirely  fanciful;  its  ob- 
ject may  be  to  inspire  a  feeling  of  vague 
beauty  or  even  of  mere  uneasy  suspicion  or 
terror,  as  of  objects  seen  through  a  mist.  Thus 
the  criticism  "it  is  not  true  to  nature"  may 
be  quite  beside  the  point.     Even  where  the 


Literature  as  a  Form  of  Art         91 

writer's  aim  is  to  give  an  impression  of  reality 
he  may  often  best  do  this  by  departing  from 
literal  description.  He  may  give  it  by  dwell- 
ing on  some  features  to  the  exclusion  of  others; 
by  slightly  exaggerating  here  and  toning  down 
there. 

No  two  persons  get  the  same  impression 
from  looking  at  the  same  thing  or  from  wit- 
nessing the  same  series  of  incidents.  When 
a  faithful  witness  describes  a  scene  or  an  in- 
cident he  lets  his  public  know  exactly  how 
it  seemed  to  him.  Other  witnesses  will  not 
agree  and  will  frequently  accuse  him  of  ro- 
mancing. A  writer  who  desires  to  be  con- 
sidered realistic  will  set  down  everything  that 
the  various  witnesses  would  be  apt  to  agree 
on  and  omit  everything  that  would  be  affected 
by  what  scientific  men  call  "the  personal 
equation."  Then  everyone  will  agree  that  the 
description  is  wonderfully  true  to  life.  But 
there  are  some  artists  and  some  writers  who 
have  the  power  not  only  to  describe  things 
as  they  see  them  but  to  make  their  public  see 
them  in  the  same  way.    The  public  will  then 


92  Earmarks  of  Literature 

say,  "Why,  how  true  that  is!  how  obvious! 
and  yet  I  never  thought  of  it  before!"  And 
others  have  the  power  to  choose  some  unnat- 
ural point  of  view  not  really  their  own,  and 
force  it  upon  their  readers.  This  is  the  kind 
of  realism  that  describes  a  blue  elephant  with 
a  yellow  tail  —  as  someone  has  said  —  "and 
makes  you  believe  it." 

A  critic  of  Turner,  the  English  artist,  is 
said  to  have  remarked  of  one  of  the  paint- 
er's sunsets  that  he  had  never  seen  such  tints 
in  the  sky.  "  Probably  not,"  rejoined  Turner, 
"  but  don't  you  wish  you  could  ?  "  Turner  was 
a  great  artist,  but  he  would  have  been  greater 
if  he  had  been  able  to  make  his  critic  think 
that  the  sunset  colors  were  normal  and  usual, 
even  if  they  were  not  so. 


CHAPTER   XI 

The  Appreciation  of  Literature 

IT  HAS  been  said  that  the  effect  of  all 
art,  and  of  literature  as  an  art,  depends 
on  the  way  in  which  the  artist  has  done  his 
work  —  on  his  technic  or  his  style.  This  is 
a  very  different  thing  from  saying  that  one 
must  understand  just  how  the  effect  is  pro- 
duced before  one  can  appreciate  it.  Rather 
is  it  true  that  we  appreciate  more  fully  when 
we  do  not  know.  It  is  indeed  interesting  to 
know  just  where  the  mechanism  is  and  how 
the  artist  operates  it,  but  the  effect  of  such 
knowledge  is  something  apart  from  the  ef- 
fect of  the  work  of  art  that  results  from  the 
artist's  skill. 

It  is  interesting  to  be  able  to  tell,  by  looking 
at  a  picture,  what  pigments  the  artist  used, 
how  he  handled  his  brush  and  what  were  his 
views  and  abilities  in  drawing,  perspective, 
and  the  distribution  of  light  and  shade.    But 

93 


94  Earmarks  of  Literature 

none  of  these  things  are  necessary  to  the  im- 
pression that  the  painting,  as  a  work  of  art, 
is  intended  to  make  on  the  beholder. 

Similarly,  it  is  interesting  to  know  that  the 
poet  has  made  skilful  use  of  quantity  and 
alliteration,  that  the  dramatist  has  used  cer- 
tain tricks  to  work  up  the  situation  that  seems 
to  us  so  naturally  brought  about,  and  so  on. 
The  student  must  investigate  and  know  these 
things;  the  creator  of  a  work  of  art  or  of 
literature  must  understand  all  the  methods 
that  can  be  successfully  used  to  bring  about 
the  effects  that  he  desires  to  create;  but  it  by 
no  means  aids  these  effects  to  lay  bare  the 
methods  to  him  upon  whom  they  are  to  be 
produced. 

This  may  comfort  some  of  the  lovers  of  art 
or  literature  who  feel  hopelessly  in  the  dark 
when  artistic  or  literary  friends  talk  glibly 
in  professional  jargon  on  technical  details. 
These  are  highly  interesting  for  those  who 
care  to  go  into  them,  so  long  as  the  skilful 
manipulation  of  some  method  is  not  lauded 
irrespective  of  the  result  that  is  attained.    A 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature       95 

student  of  surgery  is  interested  and  enthusi- 
astic when  he  sees  a  surgical  expert  perform 
some  rare  operation  with  consummate  skill.  It 
may  matter  little  to  him  if,  after  all,  the  opera- 
tion has  been  unable  to  save  the  man's  life. 
But  to  the  man  himself,  life  and  death  are  the 
only  things  that  matter. 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  many  of  us  have  been 
taught  methods,  when  what  we  need  is  the 
ability  to  appreciate  results  —  to  tell  the  good 
from  the  bad,  the  noble  from  the  mean,  in  lit- 
erature, art,  or  music.  This  can  be  done  only 
by  example.  One  cannot  become  a  good  man 
by  studying  ethics  —  by  finding  out  someone's 
theory  about  the  difference  between  good  and 
evil.  One  must  be  brought  up  by  and  with 
good  persons,  in  an  atmosphere  of  goodness. 
Good  literature,  likewise,  cannot  be  appre- 
ciated by  analysis.  We  have  analyzed,  in 
this  book,  some  of  its  phases,  but  no  reader 
need  think  that  this  process  will  help  him  to 
appreciate  or  love  it,  although  it  may  aid  him 
to  recognize  it. 

Wagner  freely  employed  in  his  music  the 


96  Earmarks  of  Literature 

so-called  leit-motif,  or  leading  motive,  a 
musical  phrase  which  he  connected  in  the 
minds  of  his  hearers  with  some  character,  in- 
cident, idea,  or  emotion.  He  thus  made  use 
of  the  principle  of  association  so  familiar  to 
students  of  psychology,  which  is  especially 
strong  with  musical  sounds.  If  one  hears  for 
the  first  time  a  striking  melodic  phrase  when 
gazing  at  a  beautiful  scene,  the  repetition  of 
that  phrase  at  any  time  will  act  forcibly  to 
bring  the  scene  again  impressively  before  the 
"mind's  eye." 

So,  when  we  have  once  seen  a  Wagnerian 
hero  enter  to  a  peculiar  and  recognizable 
strain,  we  shall  think  of  him  when  we  hear  it 
again,  and  the  composer  may  thus  control  our 
thoughts  and  emotions  to  a  certain  extent.  In 
order  that  this  effect  may  be  produced  it  is 
not  at  all  necessary  that  the  hearer  should 
consciously  recognize  the  "motive,"  or  even 
that  he  should  know  that  there  exists  such  a 
method  of  playing  upon  his  feelings.  Yet  it 
is  the  commonest  thing  to  see  persons  commit- 
ting these  motives  to  memory  and  delightedly 


The  Appreciation  of  Literature       97 

calling  them  by  name  when  they  occur  in  the 
music. 

The  real  effect  of  these  motives  is  like  that 
of  a  sight  of  the  stars  and  stripes  on  a  patri- 
otic soul.  As  he  sees  his  country's  flag  his 
pulses  leap.  He  does  not  say  "Ah!  a  piece 
of  cloth  with  stars  and  stripes  on  it!  Such  a 
piece  of  cloth  constitutes  the  flag  of  the  United 
States.  It  is  now  in  order  for  me  to  feel  pa- 
triotic!" 

No,  a  man  can  never  argue  himself  into 
an  appreciation  of  art  or  literature,  nor  can 
he  attain  it  by  learning  the  tricks  of  the  art- 
ist's trade. 

We  have  seen  above  that  no  work  of  lit- 
erature can  be  good  unless  it  is  grammatical. 
Will  our  appreciation  of  it  be  increased  by 
a  grammatical  analysis?  Ask  those  miserable 
creatures  who  have  been  forced  to  *' parse" 
Paradise  Lost  what  they  think  of  Milton's 
masterpiece!  Ask  countless  students  of  Latin 
and  Greek  whether  their  grammatical  analy- 
sis of  the  Iliad  and  the  Aeneid  conduced  to 
literary  appreciation  of  those  epics! 


98  Earmarks  of  Literature 

It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  the  ana- 
lytical knowledge  of  construction  and  its 
methods,  which  is  necessary  for  a  constructive 
artist,  should  be  so  widely  deemed  necessary 
for  the  art  lover  to  whom  the  art  is  to  deliver 
its  message.  This  belief  and  whatever  has 
been  done  to  act  upon  it,  have  killed  the  love 
and  appreciation  of  art,  music,  and  literature 
in  thousands  of  souls  where,  perhaps,  it  had 
begun  to  bud.  Anglo-Saxons  are  not  natur- 
ally appreciative  of  what  is  good  and  great 
in  art.  So  much  the  more  should  they  be  led 
to  see  it — not  taught  to  butcher  art  and  peer 
into  its  dismembered  body,  like  the  Roman 
soothsayers,  in  the  vain  hope  of  finding  there 
what  was  never  meant  to  be  revealed  in  this 
way. 


u 


CHAPTER  XII 

The  Preservation  of  Literature 

NTIL  within  a  very  few  years  there  has 
been  no  way  of  preserving  spoken  lan- 
guage except  by  remembering  it.  Informa- 
tion stored  in  this  way  must  be  handed  down 
from  father  to  son.  Tradition,  as  this  method 
of  preservation  is  called,  may  or  may  not  be 
accurate,  and  there  is  no  way  of  testing  its 
accuracy.  Spoken  language  may  now  be  re- 
corded and  reproduced  by  the  phonograph, 
and  where  the  sound  is  the  thing  to  be  pre- 
served, rather  than  the  sense,  there  is  no  other 
way  that  approaches  it  in  accuracy.  For  in- 
stance, it  gives  us  a  means  of  preserving  and 
reproducing  pronunciation;  and  great  muse- 
ums are  availing  themselves  of  this  to  record 
the  way  in  which  languages  and  dialects  are 
spoken  by  all  classes  of  people  and  in  all  parts 
of  the  world. 

But  for  long  centuries  no  accurate  method 

99 


100  Earmarks  of  Literature 

of  preserving  spoken  language  was  known.  It 
became  necessary  to  appeal  to  another  sense- 
organ  than  the  ear,  and  the  eye  was  chosen. 
Written  speech  appeals  almost  entirely  to  the 
eye;  not  entirely,  for  when  the  sense  of  sight 
is  wanting  it  has  been  necessary  to  put  the  rec- 
ord into  such  shape  that  it  can  be  read  by 
touch.     The  result  is  the  various  raised  al- 
phabets  for  the  blind.     Any  sense  may  be 
^  used  to  receive  ideas.    A  telegraphic  message 
i      has  been  read  by  wire-tappers,  by  using  the 
»fiA/v^  J    sense  of  taste,  placing  one  end  of  the  cut  wire 
rC      /     above  the  tongue  and  the  other  below  it;  but 
'^         V^^^rio  record  of  such  a  use  is  possible.     For  a 
so-called  permanent  record,  one  that  may  be 
seen   has   always  been   chosen.    The   advan- 
tage that  such  a  record  has  over  tradition  is 
not  so  much  that  it  is  really  permanent,  as  that 
it  is  unchanging  as  long  as  it  lasts,  and  can 
then   be    accurately   transferred.     Tradition 
suffers  all  sorts  of  change  not  only  in  its  place 
of   storage  —  the   memory  —  but   also   in    its 
transfer  from  one  memory  to  another. 
No   record   is   really    permanent  without 


The  Preservation  of  Literature      101 

transfer.  Records  cut  in  stone  or  cast  in  metal 
have  disappeared,  not  so  rapidly,  but  quite 
as  effectually,  as  those  scribed  in  wax.  Per- 
haps the  most  nearly  permanent  are  those 
stamped  on  clay  cylinders  and  afterward 
baked,  after  the  manner  of  the  ancient  Baby- 
lonians, and  even  these  are  not  proof  against 
breakage.  The  only  way  to  keep  a  record 
beyond  danger  of  loss  is  to  duplicate  it  widely 
and  make  sure  that  it  is  renewed  frequently. 
This  is  the  plan  that  we  have  adopted  since 
the  invention  of  printing,  and  it  is  working 
well,  especially  in  the  case  of  pure  literature 
—  the  subject  of  this  book.  For  pure  litera- 
ture, as  we  have  seen,  is  an  art,  and  appeals 
to  the  feelings;  it  is  the  object  of  emotions, 
such  as  love,  admiration,  or  wonder;  it  is 
fitted  for  companionship.  So  long  as  it  in- 
spires feelings  like  these,  the  world  will  not 
let  it  die.  Hence  the  works  of  a  writer  like 
Shakespeare  are  preserved,  not  so  much  be- 
cause someone,  realizing  that  they  contain 
matter  worth  keeping,  sees  that  new  editions 
are  constantly  issued;   but  because  so  many 


102  Earmarks  of  Literature 

readers  admire  them  that  they  are  reissued 
automatically  to  satisfy  a  commercial  demand. 

It  is  somewhat  different  with  records  that 
are  not  a  part  of  pure  literature  —  with  the 
vital  statistics  of  towns,  for  instance.  These 
are  put  into  type  and  are  reissued  when  nec- 
essary, not  because  anyone  loves  them,  but  be- 
cause governments,  or  societies,  or  scholars, 
know  their  value  and  take  measures  for  their 
preservation. 

In  our  complete  realization  of  the  fact  that 
a  permanent  record  may  be  assured  only  by 
transfer,  we  have  become  more  and  more 
careless  about  using  durable  material,  until 
we  are  overdoing  the  matter.  Transfer  will  al- 
ways be  necessary  at  some  time,  and  it  may  be 
foolish  to  use  awkward  materials  or  difficult 
and  costly  processes  merely  to  put  it  off  for  a 
century ;  but  to  require  it  at  short  intervals  is 
surely  quite  as  wasteful.  No  one  would  think 
of  printing  the  works  of  Shakespeare  with  ink 
that  would  completely  fade  away  at  the  end 
of  a  year;  yet  we  are  using  paper  for  most 
of  our  books  that  will  crumble  into  dust  in 


The  Preservation  of  Literature     103 

a  few  years.  And  we  are  using  this  kind  of 
paper  chiefly,  not  for  the  things  that  we  are 
morally  sure  must  and  will  be  reprinted,  no 
matter  how  soon  they  wear  out,  because  mil- 
lions of  readers  love  them,  but  for  things  that 
are  not  at  all  likely  to  be  reprinted  and  will 
probably  be  a  total  loss  when  they  do  crumble 
away.  Such  are  our  periodicals,  particularly 
our  daily  newspapers.  Probably  there  never 
was  such  an  amazing  instance  of  the  creation 
with  great  labor  of  a  useful  record  with  ab- 
solute disregard  of  its  preservation  —  even 
with  contemptuous  disbelief  in  its  value  —  by 
the  very  persons  who  have  framed  it. 

Librarians,  historians,  and  scholars  gener- 
ally, do  not  regard  the  newspapers  in  this  way. 
In  some  state  libraries,  every  newspaper  in 
the  state,  no  matter  how  small  and  insignifi- 
cant, is  carefully  preserved.  Thousands  of 
huge,  bulky  volumes  are  thus  accumulated 
annually,  at  great  expense  —  all  to  be  lost 
eventually,  because  the  poor  paper  on  which 
they  are  printed  will  crumble  to  dust.  It  is 
not  necessary,  of  course,  to  add  to  the  expense 


104  Earmarks  of  Literature 

of  printing  by  using  good  paper  for  the  whole 
edition.  Most  of  the  papers  are  glanced  at 
or  read  hurriedly  and  then  thrown  away. 
Only  the  copies  that  are  to  be  preserved, 
amounting  to  a  very  few  each  day,  need  be 
printed  on  strong,  durable  paper. 

An  effort  has  recently  been  made  by  a  com- 
mittee of  the  American  Library  Association 
to  induce  at  least  a  few  of  the  more  important 
American  newspapers  to  do  this,  but  only  one 
paper  agreed,  and  after  a  year's  trial,  that  one 
has  abandoned  its  strong-paper  edition  on  the 
ground  of  expense.  Our  papers  are  thus 
perfectly  willing  that  the  material  gathered  at 
great  labor  and  expense  for  the  information  of 
the  public  today  should  be  absolutely  lost  to- 
morrow. 

Our  present  method  of  preserving  written 
language  by  printing  with  ink  on  paper  and 
then  binding  the  paper  into  volumes,  involves 
some  care  in  the  preservation  of  these  volumes 
—  it  means  buildings  to  shelter  them  and  per- 
sons to  care  for  them.  The  library  is  thus  a 
necessary  factor  in  our  preservation  of  litera- 


The  Preservation  of  Literature     105 

ture.  But  we  should  not  forget  that  the  most 
important  factor  in  this  preservation,  after 
all,  is  not  to  care  for  the  paper  and  leather 
of  the  books,  but  to  see  that  they  have  readers 
who  will  love  them  and  insist  on  their  per- 
petuation. If  through  some  strange  accident 
only  one  set  of  Shakespeare's  works  should 
remain  to  us,  the  very  worst  way  of  trying 
to  prevent  loss  of  his  name  and  fame,  would 
be  to  lock  that  set  up  in  a  vault,  guard  it  jeal- 
ously, and  permit  no  one  to  handle  it.  Sooner 
or  later  its  paper  and  leather  would  decay, 
and  by  that  time  a  generation  would  have 
arisen  that  knew  not  Shakespeare.  No  one 
would  care  what  became  of  the  words  of 
genius  in  those  forgotten  volumes,  and  they 
would  perish  with  the  rotting  paper  on  which 
they  were  printed. 

The  way  to  keep  Shakespeare  would  be  to 
let  as  many  readers  as  possible  see  and  read 
the  volumes,  so  as  to  create  a  demand  for 
duplicates.  The  unique  set  might  fall  apart 
years  earlier,  but  it  would  leave  many  others 
behind  it. 


106  Earmarks  of  Literature 

All  this  is  appreciated  by  the  modern  li- 
brarian. He  sees  to  it  that  his  books,  so  far 
as  they  are  really  books  and  not  mere  curi- 
osities, are  seen  and  read  as  widely  as  may 
be  possible.  When  he  finds  that  he  wears 
out  thousands  of  volumes  in  a  year,  he  is 
glad,  so  far  as  this  wear  is  caused  by  legitimate 
use;  for  he  knows  that  such  use  means  a  love 
of  books,  and  that  such  a  love,  widely  diffused, 
is  the  best  possible  guaranty  of  the  continued 
preservation  of  what  is  best  in  the  world's 
literature. 


M 


CHAPTER  XIII 

The  Ownership  of  Literature 

OST  of  us  do  not  realize  that  art  is  an 
afifair  of  our  every-day  lives.  It  is 
commonly  regarded  as  something  difficult  and 
technical,  like  higher  mathematics,  to  be 
shown  in  great  museums  and  talked  about  by 
learned  people.  Few  persons  think  of  it  as 
having  anything  to  do  with  the  clothes  they 
wear  or  their  furniture,  or  the  utensils  of 
their  dining-rooms  and  kitchens.  Yet  if  we 
love  beautiful  things,  we  shall  desire  to  be 
surrounded  with  them  and  to  use  them.  There 
is  a  widespread  idea  that  none  but  the  rich 
can  afford  to  be  artistic;  but  the  fact  is  that 
those  who  live  most  simply  are  most  often  sur- 
rounded with  tasteful  and  beautiful  objects. 
The  same  is  even  more  true  of  the  literary 
art.  It  is  easier  to  live  among  the  beautiful 
and  noble  and  tasteful  in  books,  than  it  is  in 
furniture  or  pottery.    With  the  latter  we  are 

107 


108  Earmarks  of  Literature 

limited  to  what  is  in  the  markets  accessible 
to  us;  and  those  markets  often  contain  only 
ugly  things.  This  is  never  the  case  with  lit- 
erature. The  noblest,  the  loveliest,  and  the 
best  in  books  are  apt  to  be  the  cheapest.  On 
the  standards  of  tried  and  accepted  worth,  the 
copyrights  have  expired.  Their  cost  is  but  the 
expense  of  reproduction,  and  they  may  be  had 
in  readable  form  for  a  trifle.  Anyone,  there- 
fore, who  knows  the  earmarks  of  literature; 
who  is  able  to  select  what  is  good  and  has  the 
taste  to  appreciate  and  love  it,  may  have  it 
in  his  own  house,  as  his  personal  possession. 
We  saw  in  the  last  chapter  how  important 
a  part  the  library  is  playing  in  the  preserva- 
tion of  literature,  not  so  much  by  shutting  up 
books  jealously,  as  minerals  are  shut  up  in  a 
museum,  as  by  distributing  them  widely,  so 
that  as  many  readers  as  possible  may  know  and 
love  them  and  become  an  active  force  tending 
to  their  continued  renewal.  It  is  thus  part 
of  the  library's  work  to  make  book-lovers,  and 
this  means  that  it  is  part  of  its  business  to 
foster  book-ownership.    Modern  libraries  are 


The  Ownership  of  Literature       109 

becoming  more  and  more  the  expert  advisers 
of  those  who  want  to  own  books.  Modern 
bookstores  of  the  best  class  are  performing 
service  of  very  much  the  same  kind.  It  is  not 
to  the  bookseller's  advantage  that  he  should 
force  upon  an  unwilling  reader  something 
that  will  breed  dislike  instead  of  love.  He 
should  strive,  and  does  strive,  if  he  is  a  good 
bookseller,  so  to  advise  and  direct  purchasers 
that  they  will  come  to  love  books;  for  such 
a  love  means  that  he  has  established  a  perma- 
nent market.  The  would-be  purchaser  has 
always  accessible  to  him  the  collections  in  the 
public  libraries  and  in  the  large  bookstores, 
so  that  he  can  browse  freely,  taste  a  little  here 
and  there,  and  select  for  purchase  what  he 
feels  will  satisfy  his  demands  for  literary 
companionship. 

The  way  to  increase  one's  appreciation  and 
love  for  what  is  best  in  an  art  is  to  saturate 
oneself  with  it.  The  way  to  understand  music 
is  to  hear  much  of  it;  the  way  to  understand 
painting  or  sculpture  is  to  see  much  of  it.  So 
the  way   to   understand   and   appreciate   the 


110  Earmarks  of  Literature 

good  and  great  in  literature  is  to  read  much, 
not  forcing  oneself  to  wade  through  some- 
thing distasteful,  but  lingering  over  that 
which  appeals  to  what  is  best  in  us. 

It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  we  are 
speaking  here  only  of  literature  in  its  nar- 
rowest and  highest  sense.  If  the  reader  is 
using  a  book  for  the  information  that  it  con- 
tains he  may  properly  compel  himself  to  read 
it,  and  such  a  task  may  be  the  very  best  thing 
for  him.  He  does  not  love  the  book;  he 
simply  finds  it  necessary  and  profitable  to 
acquire  its  contents.  The  feeling  of  friend- 
ship and  affection  that  one  has  for  a  book  that 
is  part  of  the  literature  of  inspiration  is  quite 
a  different  thing  from  this.  Both  may  and  do 
lead  logically  to  book-ownership.  It  is  neces- 
sary that  we  should  have  at  hand  dictionaries 
and  cyclopedias  and  informational  books  of 
all  sorts,  though  our  feeling  toward  them  is 
the  sort  of  gratitude  that  v/e  accord  to  the 
stranger  who  has  told  us  the  name  of  the  street 
on  which  we  are  walking. 

The  book-owner  will  buy  for  his  own  use 


The  Ownership  of  Literature       HI 

books  of  information,  recreation,  and  inspira- 
tion. The  first  he  will  keep  in  his  study,  the 
second,  perhaps,  in  the  family  living-room; 
the  last  in  the  room  that  is  his  very  own, 
forming  there  a  sort  of  inner  circle  of  inti- 
mates. And  in  all  these  cases  purchase  should 
be  a  response  to  a  personal  need.  A  library 
made  up  of  books  of  information  that  the 
owner  has  no  occasion  to  use,  books  of  recrea- 
tion that  merely  bore  him,  books  of  inspiration 
that  he  neither  understands  nor  appreciates, 
and  that  meet  with  no  response  from  his  brain 
or  his  body  —  this,  surely,  is  no  library  at  all, 
but  simply  a  miscellany,  whose  elements  are 
unrelated  both  to  each  other  and  to  the  life 
and  needs  of  the  owner.  In  a  recent  study  of 
the  causes  of  lethargy  among  nations,  a  writer 
on  sociology  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  one 
of  these  causes  is  the  exaltation  of  processes 
above  results.  One  generation  wishes  to  reach 
a  certain  end  and  uses  an  appropriate  method. 
The  next  generation  no  longer  needs  the  result, 
but  it  keeps  on  with  the  process,  through  blind 
habit  and  a  mistaken  feeling  that  it  is  worth 


112  Earmarks  of  Literature 

something  for  itself  alone.  Such  a  feeling  is 
fatal  to  progress  and  it  has  halted  great 
nations  like  the  Chinese  in  their  tracks,  so  that 
they  have  merely  marked  time  for  centuries, 
while  others  who  were  savage  when  they  had 
long  been  civilized,  have  emerged  from  bar- 
barism and  far  surpassed  them  in  science  and 
the  arts. 

Now  if  there  is  one  thing  even  more  fatal 
than  adherence  to  a  process  long  after  the 
need  that  gave  rise  to  it  has  passed,  it  is  the 
worship  of  an  object  associated  in  some  way 
with  that  process.  This  is  the  mistake  made 
by  persons  who  reverence  books  merely  be- 
cause they  are  books,  and  who  think  that  they 
own  libraries  when  the  threads  of  human  need 
and  interest  that  should  bind  the  volumes 
together,  and  to  the  owners,  are  totally  lacking. 

A  man  wishes  to  be  informed,  or  amused, 
or  inspired;  that  is  his  need.  It  compels  him 
to  consult  the  records  of  what  other  minds 
have  learned,  or  discovered,  or  elaborated; 
that  is  the  process  by  which  he  tries  to  satisfy 
his  need.    The  material  object  that  we  call  a 


The  Ownership  of  Literature       113 

book  is  merely  associated  with  that  process. 
There  is  not  even  any  reason  for  the  process 
itself  unless  the  need  exists,  still  less  for  its 
machinery. 

The  buyers  of  books  too  frequently  make 
this  sad  mistake  of  becoming  the  owners  of 
devices  to  facilitate  processes  for  reaching 
results  to  which  they  are  quite  indifferent. 
He  would  be  a  foolish  man  indeed  who  should 
spend  his  money  for  a  churn  when  what  he 
needed  was  not  butter  but  the  bread  of  life. 

And  the  most  foolish  thing  of  all  is  to  own 
no  books.  An  ill-assorted  library  is  at  least 
the  vague  expression  of  a  literary  need  — 
illogical,  perhaps,  but  capable  of  being 
amended  and  developed.  The  absence  of  a 
library  is  almost  akin  to  the  absence  of  a  soul. 
Even  the  angels  can  do  no  more  in  such  a  case 
than  to  weep  —  and  hope. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

The  Makers  of  Literature 

IN  THE  chapter  on  style  it  has  been  made 
clear  that  much  of  what  is  characteristic 
in  a  work  of  pure  literature  is  derived  from 
the  author  —  his  personality,  his  abilities  and 
training;  the  way  in  which  he  looks  at  things 
and  his  way  of  describing  what  he  sees  and 
expressing  what  he  feels.  The  precise  man- 
ner in  which  each  of  these  things  comes  to  af- 
fect the  general  result  is  plain  in  some  cases; 
in  others  it  is  not  so  clear  —  it  may  be  quite 
obscure  sometimes.  They  are  very  much 
more  important  in  pure  literature  than  in 
works  of  any  other  kind.  When  a  writer  on 
arithmetic  informs  us  that  twice  two  is  four, 
the  factors  in  this  statement  are  only  three; 
the  existence  of  the  fact,  the  writer's  knowl- 
edge of  it,  and  his  ability  to  convey  it  to  us. 
When  a  poet  describes  a  sunset,  the  fact  that 
the  sun  is  setting  is  not  the  all-important  thing. 

114 


The  Makers  of  Literature  115 

The  important  things  are  the  effect  of  the 
sunset  on  the  poet's  mind,  and  the  way  in 
which  he  reproduces  that  effect  in  the  mind 
of  the  reader.  There  are  many  who  are  poets 
in  so  far  as  they  experience  the  effect,  but  they 
may  be  totally  unable  to  convey  it  to  others. 
Possibly,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  some 
who  would  be  able  to  convey  it  to  us  if  they 
felt  it  themselves,  but  they  do  not.  Of  a  man 
of  this  sort  the  poet  writes: 

A  primrose  by  the  river's  brim, 
A  yellow  primrose  was  to  him, 
And  it  was  nothing  more. 

Now  why  is  it  that  some  literature  has 
"vision"  in  it  —  makes  us  see  clearly  what 
we  could  not  see  before;  gives  us  glimpses 
of  beautiful  or  wonderful  things;  inspires  us 
to  be  good,  noble,  or  useful,  and  to  do  good, 
noble,  or  useful  things?  Under  what  circum- 
stances is  such  literature  produced?  If  we 
can  find  out,  it  would  pay  to  go  to  enormous 
trouble  and  expense  to  reproduce  and  make 
these  conditions  permanent.     "Let  me  write 


116  Earmarks  of  Literature 

the  songs  of  a  nation,"  says  a  writer,  "  and  I 
care  not  who  makes  the  laws."  We  may  ex- 
pand this  to  say:  the  influence  of  the  litera- 
ture of  inspiration  on  a  people  is  more  far 
reaching  than  that  of  any  kind  of  direct  legis- 
lation or  training. 

It  has  been  assumed  by  some  that  if  compe- 
tent persons  were  only  removed  from  the 
pressure  of  daily  labor,  they  would  be  free 
to  occupy  their  time  with  creative  work  in 
literature.  It  is  partly  for  this  reason  that 
authors  are  pensioned  in  some  European 
countries.  On  the  other  hand  it  has  been 
held  that  work  done  for  pay  is  never  of  the 
best  quality.  If  a  man  has  in  him  some  of 
this  vision  —  this  inspiration,  it  will  struggle 
out,  they  say,  no  matter  what  the  obstacles 
may  be.  Others  have  very  strong  ideas  on 
the  influence  of  environment;  writers  pro- 
duce great  literature,  they  assert,  in  appropri- 
ate surroundings;  they  sometimes  need  stimu- 
lation—  great  sights,  the  stirring  of  ambition 
or  love;  even  drugs,  like  alcohol,  caffein,  or 
nicotine.      It    has    even    been    asserted    that 


The  Makers  of  Literature  117 

genius,  whether  in  literature  or  other  fields, 
is  due  to  disease  —  either  directly  or  by  the 
stimulation  afforded  by  pain  or  other  abnor- 
mal conditions.  Probably  these  persons  "  all 
are  right  and  all  are  wrong."  The  fact  is 
that  what  we  call  genius  is  the  product  of 
many  factors  —  of  some  that  we  understand; 
of  others,  doubtless,  that  are  yet  hidden  from 
us.  In  some  cases  it  may  result  from  heredity, 
in  others  from  environment,  in  others  still 
from  years  of  plodding  work.  Sometimes  it 
may  come  from  an  exceptional  opportunity, 
sometimes  it  is  brought  out  by  some  stimulus, 
ambition,  love,  the  desire  for  wealth,  or  even 
by  bodily  pain  or  incipient  dementia.  In 
some  cases  there  seems  to  be  nothing  on  earth 
that  will  account  for  it. 

Under  these  circumstances,  we  see  that  a 
great  literary  masterpiece  may  arise  under  the 
most  varied  circumstances.  It  may  bud  and 
blossom  in  the  least  expected  place;  it  may 
be  the  product  of  years  of  labor;  it  may  be 
done  for  pay,  or  it  may  be  put  forth  in  the 
pure  joy  of  creative  accomplishment.    There 


118  Earmarks  of  Literature 

are  various  ways  in  which  we  may  raise  the 
average  level  of  accomplishment  in  any  field 
or  in  all  fields,  but  no  way  in  which  we  may 
produce  a  genius  at  will. 

One  thing,  however,  may  surely  be  done. 
Genius  may  arise  spontaneously;  or,  what  is 
the  same  thing,  it  may  be  produced  under 
conditions  that  are  yet  obscure  to  us.  But 
once  produced,  it  may  be  given  an  opportu- 
nity for  expression,  or  it  may  be  smothered 
or  allowed  to  "blush  unseen  and  waste  its 
fragrance  on  the  desert  air."  This  latter  has 
too  often  been  the  case.  Many  great  scien- 
tists, inventors,  poets,  and  artists  are  not  dis- 
covered until  after  they  are  dead.  Earlier 
discovery  and  recognition  might  not  have  im- 
proved their  output;  it  might  have  spoiled 
some  of  them,  but  at  least  it  would  have  been 
an  act  of  justice. 

Conditions  at  present  are  more  favorable 
than  ever  before  to  the  early  recognition  and 
discovery  of  genius,  because  they  are  more 
favorable  to  the  wide  dissemination  of  all 
artistic  products  and  to  the  training  of  the 


The  Makers  of  Literature  119 

public  to  appreciate  them.  These  conditions 
favor  also  the  dissemination  of  all  sorts  of 
inferior  products,  as  a  fertile  soil  favors  the 
growth  of  weeds  as  well  as  plants.  Our  pres- 
ent methods  are  like  those  of  the  old-fash- 
ioned cultivator:  we  let  weeds  and  plants 
both  spring  up  and  then  uproot  the  former. 
A  better  method  is  coming  to  be  recognized 
—  the  preparation  of  the  soil  by  sterilization 
so  that  the  weeds  will  not  spring  up  at  all. 
If  we  could  only  so  deal,  by  education  and 
training,  with  the  minds  of  the  people,  that 
the  mental  product  should  never  fall  below  a 
standard  grade,  we  should  be  doing  the  same 
thing  in  the  field  of  art  and  literature.  Of 
course  we  shall  never  succeed  altogether,  but 
this  is  the  goal  at  which  educators  should  aim. 
Schools  and  colleges,  and  libraries,  and  study 
clubs,  and  civic  and  social  organizations  of 
all  kinds,  are  continually  working  toward  this 
end.  We  can  scarcely  doubt  that  they  will 
do  something  at  least  to  improve  the  makers 
of  literature  and  to  raise  the  standard  of  their 
output. 


s 


CHAPTER  XV 

Some  Formalities  of  Written  Speech 

OME  of  the  things  that  dififerentiate 
spoken  from  written  speech  are  consid- 
ered in  a  previous  chapter.  In  addition  there 
are  certain  formal  or  symbolical  elements  be- 
longing to  written  speech,  that  can,  by  their 
very  nature,  have  no  part  in  spoken  language. 
Foremost  among  these  are  capitalization  and 
punctuation.  We  may  first  consider  the  ques- 
tion: Since  it  is  impossible  to  capitalize  and 
punctuate  spoken  language,  of  what  use  are 
capitals  and  points  in  written  speech?  Do 
we  not  understand  clearly  what  a  good 
speaker  is  saying  to  us?  If  so,  why  add  to 
the  complexities  of  writing  in  an  endeavor 
to  make  it  clearer  still?  Are  not  these  addi- 
tions purely  arbitrary,  and  should  we  not  gain 
by  omitting  them?  To  a  large  extent  this 
question  is  undoubtedly  justified,  and  in  so  far 
as  capitalization  and  punctuation  are  arbi- 

120 


Formalities  of  Written  Speech      121 

trary  it  might  be  an  improvement  to  disregard 
them.  They  are  in  fact  being  disregarded 
more  today  than  formerly  and  more  in  the 
United  States  than  in  England.  Still,  it  is 
probable  that  we  shall  always  retain  them  or 
their  equivalents  to  some  extent  in  written 
speech.  In  the  first  place,  it  may  be  noted 
that  elements  making  for  clearness  in  spoken 
language  are  necessarily  absent  in  the  writ- 
ten form,  so  that  it  is  necessary  to  supply  their 
place.  Intonation,  inflection,  and  pauses  play 
a  large  part  in  spoken  language.  In  ordinary 
speech  we  do  not  find  it  necessary  to  indicate 
in  any  way  the  end  of  one  word  and  the  be- 
ginning of  the  next;  in  other  words,  we  do 
not  speak  our  words  separately,  except  to  a 
child  or  a  foreigner.  Intonation  and  accent 
make  this  necessary.  In  older  forms  of  al- 
phabetical written  language  the  same  thing 
was  done,  and  in  some  old  inscriptions,  for  in- 
stance, there  is  no  separation  of  the  words, 
making  reading  a  slow  and  difficult  matter. 
Later  it  was  found  indispensable  to  make  such 
separation,  which  was  done  first  by  punctua- 


122  Earmarks  of  Literature 

tion  and  afterward  by  leaving  a  space  between 
each  word  and  the  next.  Something  like  the 
same  reason  is  valid  in  all  punctuation.  It 
is  not  true,  as  used  to  be  taught,  that  each 
point  corresponds  to  a  pause.  The  points 
are  to  bring  out  the  grammatical  relations  of 
the  sentence,  which  in  spoken  language  would 
be  brought  out  not  only  by  pauses,  but  also  by 
stress,  intonation,  and  inflection.  When  a 
question  is  asked,  for  instance,  a  speaker 
makes  it  clear  by  an  upward  turn  of  his  voice 
at  the  end.  In  writing,  we  replace  this  by  an 
interrogation  point.  It  is  a  fact,  however, 
that  we  generally  apprehend  these  gram- 
matical relations  more  easily  when  the  punc- 
tuation is  not  too  close.  This  is  partly  due  to 
the  fact  that  we  have  no  point  of  lower  grade 
than  the  comma,  and  when  many  commas  are 
used  we  have  no  means  of  telling  which  ones 
correspond  in  marking  the  beginning  and  end 
of  clauses.  Hence  the  tendency,  as  noted 
above,  is  to  be  sparing  with  points.  In  other 
words,  we  are  bearing  in  mind  that  the  point 
is  simply  to  clear  up  the  writer's  meaning, 


Formalities  of  Written  Speech      123 

in  places  where  the  means  used  for  this  pur- 
pose in  spoken  language  are  lacking.  Where 
there  is  no  such  necessity  —  where  the  ob- 
scurity could  be  avoided  by  a  rearrangement 
of  words,  or  where  everything  is  perfectly 
clear  as  it  stands,  no  point  need  be  used,  no 
matter  what  "rule"  some  writer  may  have 
evolved  on  the  subject. 

A  mark  that  is  practically  one  of  punctua- 
tion is  the  hyphen.  In  studying  its  use  we 
meet  the  whole  question  of  whether  two 
words,  used  together,  should  be  written  sepa- 
rately, or  as  a  solid  word,  or  with  a  hyphen 
between  them.  Evidently  no  such  distinctions 
obtain  in  oral  speech.  Small  volumes  have 
been  written  on  the  subject,  laying  down  ar- 
bitrary rules  and  condemning  departures 
therefrom  as  incorrect.  So  far  as  these  rules 
conduce  to  clearness  they  are  well  made,  but 
if  we  regard  the  hyphen  as  a  mark  of  punctu- 
ation, we  shall  conclude,  and  conclude  rightly, 
that  it  may  be  used  anywhere  for  the  improve- 
ment of  clearness,  and  omitted  anywhere 
when  its  use  would  not  clear  up  an  obscurity. 


124  Earmarks  of  Literature 

Lack  of  appreciation  of  these  principles  leads 
to  an  occasional  obscurity.  For  instance,  the 
title  Vice  President  is  always  written  as  two 
words.  But  when  we  use  the  prefix  ex-  with 
it,  to  denote  a  former  vice  president,  what 
shall  we  do?  Sticklers  for  form  write  ex-vice 
president,  connecting  the  prefix  closely  with 
the  first  word  and  not  at  all  with  the  second. 
If  we  could  use  algebraic  symbols  we  could 
write  "ex- (vice  president),"  using  the  paren- 
thesis to  denote  that  the  prefix  applies  to  all 
within.  This,  of  course,  is  impracticable. 
What  we  can  do,  however,  is  either  to  write 
the  title  as  one  word  here,  or  to  hyphenate  it, 
making  either  "ex-vicepresident"  or  "ex- 
vice-president."  This  breaks  rules  and  is  in- 
consistent, but  makes  for  clearness,  which  is 
the  object,  after  all,  that  the  rules  were  meant 
to  attain. 

Sometimes  punctuation  supplies  a  need  that 
is  not  filled  in  spoken  language.  For  in- 
stance, marks  of  quotation  are  obviously  use- 
ful, and  we  can  supply  their  place  in  reading 
or  speaking  only  by  using  some  awkward 


Formalities  of  Written  Speech      125 

phrase,    such    as   ''beginning   of    quotation," 
"the  quotation  ends  here,"  or  the  like. 

In  capitalization,  we  have  a  much  more  ar- 
bitrary formality  of  written  speech,  having  ab- 
solutely nothing  in  spoken  language  to  corre- 
spond with  it.  Some  of  the  purposes  for 
which  it  was  once  used  have  been  abandoned, 
at  least  in  English.  It  was  once  the  custom 
to  begin  all  nouns  with  a  capital,  and  it  is  still 
so  in  German,  but  we  have  given  this  up. 
Library  cataloguers  have  given  up  most  of  the 
capitals.  We  might  give  up  the  use  of  capi- 
tals altogether  without  sacrificing  the  clear- 
ness and  intelligibility  of  written  speech.  It 
would  "  look  queer,"  but  that  means  nothing 
more  than  that  it  would  be  a  change.  Modern 
German  would  look  very  odd  to  its  readers 
if  the  nouns  were  not  all  capitalized.  Cap- 
italization as  we  employ  it  is  a  pure  formality, 
a  relic  of  medievalism.  The  only  reason  for 
retaining  it  is  that  it  is  a  familiar  feature  of 
written  language,  and  it  is  very  doubtful 
whether  this  should  have  weight  against  the 
efifort  and  time  necessarv  to  learn  and  retain 


126  Earmarks  of  Literature 

the  purely  arbitrary  rules  for  its  use.  We 
are  dropping  useless  punctuation  and  we  have 
already  dropped  much  capitalization.  Prob- 
ably the  rest  could  be  spared  also. 

Another  formality  is  the  use  of  special  type 
in  the  body  of  the  word,  such  as  italics,  cap- 
itals, or  small  capitals.  This  usually  repre- 
sents some  peculiarity  of  stress  or  tone  in 
spoken  language.  Italics,  for  instance,  often 
denote  emphasis,  although  a  reference  to  the 
rules  for  their  use  will  show  that  they  may 
also  serve  other  purposes,  in  cases  where  they 
might  as  well  be  dropped.  It  is  difficult  to 
see  why  the  name  of  a  newspaper  or  of  a 
steamer  should  be  italicized.  No  special 
stress  or  intonation  is  used  in  pronouncing 
either  and  no  confusion  could  arise,  in  a  prop- 
erly constructed  sentence,  from  printing  them 
in  Roman  type.  Italics  or  capitals  are  some- 
times used  with  humorous  effect.  Thackeray 
employs  them  in  this  way.  Howells  makes 
good  use  of  italics  to  bring  out  unusual  or  ab- 
normal stress  in  dialectal  speech;  so  does 
Mark  Twain.    We  could  not  altogether  dis- 


Formalities  of  Written  Speech      127 

pense  with  them ;  but  we  could  cut  down  their 
use  considerably,  and  we  are  doing  so. 

A  further  consideration  of  this  subject 
brings  us  again  to  that  of  so-called  spelling 
"  reform."  Is  it  not  true  that  a  silent  letter, 
for  instance,  has  the  same  status  as  a  useless 
capital  or  mark  of  punctuation;  and  may  it 
not  be  omitted,  since  there  is  now  nothing  to 
correspond  to  it  in  the  spoken  tongue? 

This  is  doubtless  the  view  of  those  who  ad- 
vocate changes  in  our  spelling,  but  it  is  not 
that  of  the  present  writer.  To  him  it  seems 
that  while  capitalization  and  punctuation  are 
not  integral  parts  of  the  language,  being 
merely  formalities,  handmaidens  of  speech, 
whose  services  may  be  dispensed  with  when 
they  are  no  longer  needed,  symbols  that  are 
part  of  the  word  itself,  even  if  corresponding 
sounds  have  been  dropped  from  speech,  stand 
on  a  different  footing,  as  integral  parts  of  the 
written  language.  This,  of  course,  is  to  re- 
gard the  written  tongue  as  having  a  separate 
status  —  as  being  something  other  than  merely 
a  way  of  recording  spoken  language. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

The  Context  in  Literature 

WE  CANNOT  study  literature  long 
without  seeing  that  it  cannot  be  dis- 
membered without  injury.  An  article,  a 
poem,  even  a  book,  must  be  read  as  a  whole 
if  we  are  to  get  at  its  meaning  and  if  we  are  to 
receive  its  full  effect  as  literature.  A  para- 
graph or  a  sentence,  separated  from  its  sur- 
roundings, is  much  like  an  arm  or  a  finger 
broken  from  a  statue.  It  may  be  beautiful 
and  may  convey  an  idea,  but  it  gives  no  idea 
of  the  whole. 

Nothing  is  more  common  than  to  quote  ex- 
tracts from  some  great  work.  If  these  serve 
to  whet  the  reader's  curiosity  so  that  he  goes 
at  once  to  see  the  gem  in  its  real  setting,  they 
do  no  harm;  but  often  they  simply  give  a 
wrong  idea  of  the  work  that  they  profess  to 
illustrate. 

The  point  of  a  jest  is  often  lost  or  altered 

128 


The  Context  in  Literature  129 

by  removing  it  from  its  context.  For  instance, 
Sydney  Smith,  the  great  English  humorist,  is 
often  quoted  as  saying  of  a  certain  man  that 
he  "  spoke  very  disrespectfully  of  the  equator." 
This  always  seemed  to  me  to  be  a  poor  joke, 
or  rather  a  hint  at  some  joke  that  lay  con- 
cealed. So  in  fact  it  is.  The  context  brings 
it  out.    This  is  the  real  story: 

A  certain  bore  had  devised  a  method  of 
map-drawing  with  which  he  bothered  all  his 
friends.  Occasionally  they  rebelled.  Confid- 
ing in  Sydney  Smith,  the  map-drawer  was 
telling  of  a  recent  rebuff.  "And  when  I  was 
explaining  about  my  parallels  of  latitude, 
what  do  you  suppose  he  said?  He  said 
'Damn  the  parallels  of  latitude!'" 

"  Oh,  that's  nothing  at  all,"  quickly  replied 
Smith.  "  Do  you  know,  I've  even  heard  him 
speak  very  disrespectfully  of  the  equator!" 

The  context,  it  will  be  seen,  makes  a  sorry 
jest  into  a  good  one. 

Perhaps  nothing  illustrates  how  utterly  an 
expressed  idea,  separated  from  its  context, 
may  change,  than  the  present  use  of  the  word 


130  Earmarks  of  Literature 

*' muck-raker."  This  word  originated  in  a 
speech  of  Theodore  Roosevelt's,  in  which  he 
compared  petty  faultfinders  to  ''The  man 
with  the  muck-rake,"  in  the  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress of  Bunyan.  His  hearers,  most  of  whom 
must  have  been  unfamiliar  with  Bunyan,  con- 
cluded that  the  man  must  have  been  out  in  the 
barnyard  raking  muck,  or  filth;  and  the 
whole  use  of  the  word  has  been  affected  by 
this  idea.  If  anyone  had  taken  a  few  minutes 
to  look  up  the  context,  he  would  have  found 
that  the  name  "muck-rake"  was  used  by  Bun- 
yan simply  as  denoting  a  familiar  form  of 
rake,  and  that  the  first  element  of  it  meant 
nothing  in  particular.  The  man  was  not  in 
a  filthy  barnyard,  raking  over  the  muck;  he 
was  in  a  room,  gathering  straws  and  other 
trivial  and  inconsequential  things  with  the 
aid  of  his  rake.  Bunyan's  point  was  that  the 
man  was  overlooking  essentials  to  pick  out 
trivialities,  and  Roosevelt's  use  of  the  word 
is  perfectly  explicable  on  this  theory.  But 
no  one  takes  the  trouble  to  read  the  context, 
and  for  ninety-nine  readers  out  of  a  hundred 


The  Context  in  Literature  131 

"the  man  with  the  muck-rake"  will  hence- 
forth be  a  man  who  is  raking  muck. 

Often  a  widely-quoted  passage  in  some 
poem  or  play  fails  to  be  perfectly  understood 
or  appreciated  because  the  reader  does  not 
know  something  that  precedes  it.  Take  for 
instance  such  a  celebrated  speech  as  Portia's 
in  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  beginning  "The 
quality  of  mercy  is  not  strained."  This  first 
line  is  often  both  misunderstood  and  under- 
estimated because  the  reader  does  not  remem- 
ber its  connection  with  the  previous  lines,  to 
which  it  is  an  answer.  Why  should  Portia, 
in  a  discourse  on  Mercy,  begin  by  saying 
that  it  is  not  "strained?"  Because,  when  she 
has  just  told  Shylock  that  he  must  be  merciful, 
he  has  asked: 

On  what  compulsion  must  I  ?    Tell  me  that ! 

This  is  an  excuse  for  the  discourse.  Portia 
says  in  effect:  "My  poor  fellow,  you  have 
misconceived  the  whole  nature  and  operation 
of  the  quality  called  mercy,  and  I  shall  have 
to  enlighten  you.    In  the  first  place,  mercy  is 


132  Earmarks  of  Literature 

not  something  that  comes  with  compulsion; 
it  is  not  'strained'  or  forced  —  it  droppeth 
gently  as  the  dew."  How  the  context  here 
illumines  the  whole  passage! 

In  some  cases  popular  misapprehension 
goes  so  far  that  it  seems  as  if  the  public  could 
not  have  read  the  work  at  all.  Take,  for  in- 
stance, the  persistence  with  which  the  island 
of  Juan  Fernandez  is  spoken  of  as  "  Robinson 
Crusoe's  island."  No  reader  of  Robinson 
Crusoe  is  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  his  island 
was  in  the  Atlantic,  whereas  Juan  Fernandez 
is  in  the  Pacific.  The  mistake  arose  from  the 
fact  that  Defoe  is  said  to  have  received  a  sug- 
gestion of  his  fictitious  story  from  the  true  tale 
of  Alexander  Selkirk,  a  sailor  who  lived  alone 
for  years  on  Juan  Fernandez.  Here  the  whole 
story  of  Robinson  Crusoe  is  a  corrective  con- 
text to  the  incorrect  popular  idea. 

These  things  should  warn  a  reader  never 
to  trust  an  extract  that  appears  by  itself.  If 
he  is  inclined  to  disagree  with  its  statements 
or  to  think  it  obscure  or  odd,  let  him  read  the 
context  before  he  draws  a  conclusion.    The 


The  Context  in  Literature  133 

reading  of  extracts  is  not  to  be  condemned, 
but  the  best  way  is  to  pick  them  out  for  one- 
self with  the  context  always  present,  so  that 
one  may  take  in  as  much  of  it  as  may  be  nec- 
essary. Something  is  said  of  this  in  the  next 
chapter. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

The  Sampling  of  Literature 

TT  HAS  been  here  stated,  or  implied,  that 
-*-  in  no  kind  of  art,  least  of  all  in  literature, 
will  the  mere  knowing  how  a  thing  is  done 
conduce  to  an  appreciation  of  that  thing  or 
lend  itself  to  the  heightening  of  the  effect  that 
the  thing  was  intended  to  produce.  To  en- 
joy literature  one  must  read,  and  read  again, 
and  keep  on  reading.  This  does  not  mean 
that  every  masterpiece  is  fitted  to  appeal  to 
every  kind  of  man,  though  doubtless  the 
greater  it  is  the  more  universal  will  be  its 
appeal.  The  only  way  in  which  one  can 
ascertain  and  form  one's  taste  is  to  read  very 
freely  by  sample  —  to  browse,  as  it  is  gen- 
erally called.  It  may  be  thought  that  this 
contradicts  what  has  been  said  in  another 
chapter  on  the  value  of  the  context,  but  there 
is  in  reality  no  contradiction.  If  the  samples 
are  removed  from  the  context  they  may  easily 

134 


The  Sampling  of  Literature        135 

give  a  wrong  impression,  as  we  have  seen. 
But  in  "browsing"  they  are  not  so  separated. 
They  are  taken  in  connection  with  the  con- 
text, and  as  much  of  it  as  may  be  necessary 
to  complete  understanding  and  appreciation 
will  naturally  be  read  with  them. 

The  advantages  of  ''browsing"  are  two- 
fold—  that  gained  in  the  process  itself  and 
that  obtained  through  reading  suggested  or 
guided  by  it. 

In  the  first  place,  the  browser  gains  a  first- 
hand knowledge  of  authors,  with  the  titles 
and  general  character  of  their  works.  One 
may  discover  that  Omar  Khayyam  wrote  a 
book  called  the  Rubaiyat,  by  holding  a  copy 
in  the  hand  for  a  second,  without  even  open- 
ing it;  a  brief  glance  within  will  disclose  that 
the  work  consists  of  poetry  in  four-line 
stanzas.  Nor  is  such  knowledge  to  be  sneered 
at  as  superficial.  It  is  all  that  we  need  to 
possess  about  scores  of  authors.  One  may 
never  study  higher  mathematics,  but  it  may 
be  good  for  him  to  know  that  Lagrange  was 
a  French  writer  on  analytical  mechanics,  that 


136  Earmarks  of  Literature 

Euclid  was  a  Greek  geometer  and  that  Ham- 
ilton invented  quaternions.  All  this  and 
vastly  more  may  be  impressed  on  the  mind  by 
an  hour  in  the  mathematical  alcove  of  a 
library  of  moderate  size.  Information  of  this 
kind  is  almost  impossible  to  acquire  from  lists 
or  from  oral  statement,  whereas  a  moment's 
handling  of  a  book  in  the  concrete  may  fix  it 
in  the  mind  for  good  and  all.  This  is  on  the 
supposition  that  not  a  word  is  read.  But  in  a 
very  brief  perusal  the  reader  may  get  an  idea 
of  the  author's  style,  may  absorb  and  appre- 
ciate some  of  his  ideas,  and  may  definitely 
place  him  in  some  sort  of  scheme  of  literature. 
The  direct  effect  of  what  one  may  get  by 
this  sort  of  sampling  is  thus  by  no  means  neg- 
ligible. The  indirect  effect  is  even  more 
important;  for  it  may  result  in  the  definite 
formation  of  literary  taste.  Taste  formed  in 
this  way  is  more  characteristic  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  on  the  whole  more  valuable,  than 
that  which  is  the  result  of  too  much  guidance. 
Taste  fixed  by  someone  who  tells  the  reader 
what  he  ought  to  like  is  not  the  reader's  taste 


The  Sampling  of  Literature        137 

at  all  but  that  of  his  informant.  We  have,  on 
the  whole,  too  little  individual  taste  and  too 
much  tendency  toward  teaching  that  one  must 
and  should  follow  the  taste  of  the  majority. 
The  student  who  likes  what  is  trivial  and 
below  standard  is  by  no  means  hopeless.  As 
he  grows  in  knowledge  and  judgment,  as  well 
as  in  breadth  of  reading,  he  may,  and  prob- 
ably will,  change  his  mind  about  many  books. 
If  he  frankly  acknowledges  his  likes  and  dis- 
likes there  is  some  hope  for  him.  If  he  pre- 
tends to  like  that  which  is  good  simply  be- 
cause he  thinks  he  ought  to  like  it,  he  is 
forming  a  habit  of  hypocrisy,  which  will  be 
good  neither  for  his  mind  nor  his  character. 
The  reader  who  investigates  the  field  of 
literature  for  himself  and  forms  his  own  esti- 
mates will  frequently  find  that  he  admires  that 
which  generations  have  admired  before  him. 
The  sensation  of  pleasure  and  satisfaction  that 
will  result  from  such  a  discovery  is  vastly 
greater  than  that  of  liking  a  writer  whom  one 
has  been  previously  told  he  ought  to  like. 
And  if  the  reader  admires  one  who  has  not 


138  Earmarks  of  Literature 

yet  found  his  place  in  the  literary  pantheon, 
then  there  is  equal  satisfaction,  but  of  a  dif- 
ferent kind  —  that  of  original  discovery. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

The  Sum  of  the  Matter 

WE  HAVE  seen  that  literature  has  ear- 
marks—  that  there  are  signs  to  identify 
it  among  the  mass  of  trivial,  unfit,  ignoble, 
and  ephemeral  works  with  which  it  first  sees 
the  light  and  under  which  it  is  often  buried. 
Those  signs  may  be  vague;  it  may  not  be  pos- 
sible for  some  to  read  them.  He  who  does 
not  know  correct  English  from  incorrect  can 
not  condemn  the  ungrammatical  book;  he 
who  has  not  a  sense  of  fitness  will  not  be  able 
to  discard  what  is  unfitting;  he  whose  feeling 
for  rhyme  or  rhythm  is  deficient  will  never 
be  a  judge  of  poetry.  And  he  whose  pulses 
do  not  respond  to  what  is  noble  and  inspiring 
will  never  recognize  nobility  and  inspiration 
when  he  meets  them  in  literature.  Some  read- 
ers, doubtless,  never  can  acquire  these  things. 
Others,  unfortunately,  have  lacked  opportu- 
nity.   But  the  marks  are  there;  it  is  right  that 

139 


140  Earmarks  of  Literature 

we  should  realize  this  fact  and  not  imagine 
that  the  difference  between  a  great  writer  and 
a  poor  one  depends  wholly  on  some  kind  of 
critical  appreciation  that  bears  no  tangible 
relation  to  their  works. 

We  have  seen  that  the  reader's  own  interest 
in  a  work  of  literature  and  love  for  it  is  an 
important  element  in  his  relationship  to  it, 
and  that  his  lack  of  knowledge  of  its  technical 
construction  is  no  reason  why  its  message 
should  not  reach  him.  We  have  seen  that 
literature  is  a  form  of  art,  and  that,  as  in 
other  forms,  such  as  sculpture,  painting,  or 
music,  the  artist's  message  is  conveyed  in  it  by 
the  way  in  which  he  has  been  able  to  handle 
his  subject,  rather  than  by  the  content  of  that 
subject  itself. 

We  have  seen  that  literature  is  preserved 
by  love  —  by  wide  knowledge  and  apprecia- 
tion rather  than  by  seclusion,  and  that  a  wide- 
spread love  of  good  literature  is  vitally 
necessary  if  we  are  to  hand  down  to  our 
descendants  what  is  best  instead  of  something 
scarcely  worth  while. 


The  Sum  of  the  Matter  141 

In  this  dissemination  and  the  popular 
education  that  accompanies  it,  the  great  col- 
lections of  books  in  our  public  libraries  play 
an  important  part,  but  no  less  important  is 
the  ownership  of  books  by  those  who  love 
them.  He  who  has  never  loved  a  book  has 
lost  something  from  his  life.  He  who  has 
loved  books,  but  has  owned  none,  must  have 
loved  them  little;  for  the  book-lover  who  is 
content  with  his  first  reading  can  hardly  be 
one  to  whom  literature  in  its  highest  and  best 
sense  makes  a  moving  appeal.  The  conclu- 
sion of  the  whole  matter  is  this :  Know  books ; 
love  books  —  and  be  their  possessor. 


INDEX 


Academy,  French,  19 

Accent,  definition,  49 

Accent  in  poetry,  62 ;  in  prose, 
50 

Agglutinative  stage  of  lan- 
guage, -]■] 

Alliteration,  in  poetry,  48,  52 

Alphabet,  origin  of,  71 ;  vs. 
syllabary,  82 

Alphabets  for  the  blind,  100; 
foreign,  76 

Analysis,  misuse  of,  97 

Appreciation  of  literature,  93 

Appropriateness  of  style,  Z'^^ 

Arabic  characters,  76,  82 ;  lan- 
guage, 85 

Art,  characteristics  of,  44;  lit- 
erature, a  form  of,  87 

Authors  of  literature,  114 

Auxiliaries,  use  of,  79 

Browsing,  134 

Capitalization,  120 

Character  in  style,  40 

Children's  books,  inappropri- 
ate, 35 

Chinese  characters,  71,  76,  81 

Classical  allusions  in  litera- 
ture, 28 

Classification  of  literature,  3 

Clearness  and  correctness  dis- 
tinguished, 22 ;  confusing 
attempts  at,  30;  of  style,  21 

Context  in  literature,  128 


Drama,  The,  53 
Dramas,  "novelized,"  55 

Eskimo  language,  79 
Esperanto,  86 

Foreign  words,  use  of,  27 
Formalities  of  literature,  120 
Forms,   special,   in   literature, 

47 
French  a  literary  tongue,  8 

Genius,  causes  of,  117 
German,  capitalization  in,  125 
Grammar,  in  style,  10 
Greek  language,  79 

Headlines,  style  of,  48 
Hebrew  characters,  76,  82 
Hiragana  syllabary,  81 
Hyphen,  The,  123 

Idiographs,  ^d 
Idioms,  17 

Ido,  modified  Esperanto,  86 
Indian  languages,  "jy 
Infinitives,  "split,"  23 
Inflected  languages,  78 
Irish  "brogue,"  74 
Italics,  use  of,  126 

James,  Henry,  style  of,  29,  42 
Japanese  characters,  76,  81 

Katakana  syllabary,  81 

Language,  growth  of,  12;  in- 


143 


144 


Index 


ternational,  85;  laws  of,  11 ; 
origin  of,  70;  three  stages 
of,  76;  written  and  spoken, 
70 

Leit-motif,  in  Wagner's  op- 
eras, 96 

Letters,  style  of,  34 

Library  and  book-ownership, 
108;  a  factor  in  book-pres- 
ervation, 104 

Literature,  meaning  of  the 
word,  I 

Meredith,  George,  style  of,  42 
Meter,  in  poetry,  51,  62,  67 
"Methinks,"  use  of,  17 
Muck-raker,    origin   of   term, 

130 
Music,  for  verse,  37, 67 ;  "pro- 
gram," 88 

Nature  in  art,  90 
Negative,  the  double,  14 
Newspapers,  evanescence  of, 

103 
Novels,  dramatized,  55;  form 

in,  57 

Obscurity,  two  kinds  of,  21 
"Occasional"  literature,  36 
Operas,  librettos  of,  68 
Oratory,  55 

Paper,  poor  quality  of,  103 
Parodies,  43 

Pensions  for  authors,  116 
Phonograph  records,  74,  99 
Poetry,  48;   as   literature,   5; 

reading   aloud,   61 ;    set   to 

music,  27>  67 


Portia,  speech  on  mercy,  131 
Pronunciation,  73 ;  records  of, 

99 
Punctuation,  120 

Quantity,  in  poetry,  51,  64 

Reading  poetry  aloud,  61 
Records,  permanence  of,  lOl 
Rhymes  for  the  eye,  61 
Rhythm  in  poetry,  62 
Robinson  Crusoe's  island,  132 
Roosevelt,   Theodore,   use   of 

"muck-rake,"  130 
Rules,  status  in  language,  18 

Slang,  13 

Smith,   Sydney,   anecdote  of, 

129 
Solemn  diction,  in  English,  34 
Spelling  reform,  75,  127 
Style,  definition,  9 
"Style  is  the  man,"  40 
Subjects,  in  literature,  44 
Syllabaries,  81 
Syllabic  stage  of  language,  77 

Technic,  in  art,  93 
Telegraphic  style,  47 
Tradition,  100 
Translation  of  poetry,  68 
Transliteration,  84 
Turkish  language,  78 

Unities,  dramatic,  53 

Volapuk,  86 

Wagner's    music-dramas,    52, 

68,95 
"You  was,"  incorrectness  of, 

IS 


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